《Celestial Magus》


 Prologue

    Robert Woods was sitting in a small cubicle, his eyes anxiously staring at a progress bar on his computer monitor. Sleep deprivation was showing on his face. Although he was in his early twenties, right now his countenance was that of a middle-aged man.


    Robert¡¯s cubicle was situated in a corner of a large hall with almost a hundred such cubicles. The whole hall was filled with darkness, only a single cubicle, Robert¡¯s, was lit by the computer screen.


    A ¡°Ding¡° signaled the progress bar completion. All the lights in the hall came back on. The Quantum Particle Accelerator used up all the power of the nearby nuclear reactor while running. The building¡¯s electrical system was programmed to turn off the unneeded electronic equipment while the QPA was running. Robert heaved a sigh. Finally!


    Robert was a prot¨¦g¨¦ of Professor Stephen, one of the pioneers in the field of physics. Robert was currently interning at the QPA, the second largest particle accelerator in the world. It was only second to CERN''s Large Hadron Collider.


    He was waiting for the daily QPA experiments to get completed. After a month of helping out Stephen finishing his new book ¡°Going smaller than quarks¡±, Robert had saved up a few minutes from Stephen¡¯s quota of particle accelerator time.


    The particle accelerator running time was limited, it could only be operated for a few hours each week. Naturally, the queue to get some running time was quite long. To get it you had to be a rather influential in science world with strong connections. Or you had to pay a hefty price and wait years before you got some time for running experiments.


    The sound of Robert typing on his mechanical keyboard contrasted the stark silence of the hall. He typed in the command to start the experiment he had been programming for years. An experiment to create antimatter!


    He felt his heartbeat rising, it was not every day that one got to play with a multi-billion dollar toy! And this ¡°toy¡° was the dream of all scientists interested in the field of physics.


    He silently stared at the monitor for a moment before his index finger pressed the enter key.


    Status messages started flooding the black terminal on his monitor. It looked like a waterfall of obscure computer code, the lights in the hall turned off again. Roberts cubicle was again the only lit place in the hall, like a lighthouse in an ocean of darkness.


    <Meanwhile underground inside the QPA>


    A tube-like structure lit up. It was the neutron source of the reactor. A beam flashed out of the tube and started moving through the tunnel. It was bound by the magnetic field of the huge superconductor magnets surrounding it. The tunnel was in the shape of a ring with at least a kilometer in diameter.


    After a few seconds, the beam shot through the tunnel. From the heavy load, the electromagnets that surround the tunnel started to make buzzing noises.


    Robert¡¯s computer was still showing the status messages, he had his fingers crossed. This was an unauthorized experiment. One which could make or break his career. Although he was skeptic about the existence of a higher power, he felt like praying.


    A few seconds later the proton beam collided with another beam of protons, the minuscule particles exploded inside the tunnel. The near light speed of the accelerated protons had given the beam tremendous energy, the collision of two of these beams created an explosion that resembled the primordial big bang. This primordial big bang was said to have created the universe. Robert only hoped that the miniature big bang inside the tunnel would produce some antimatter.


    Although as Robert knew, the chance of this happening was rather low, it happened. Sensors register the new particles and the supercomputer executed Robert¡¯s instructions. The few newly formed antimatter particles were stored in a magnetic field container.


    The status screen in front of Robert changed.


    ¡°It worked!¡°


    Robert felt like screaming ¡°Eureka!¡±, but he didn''t want to wake up the floor security. "It actually worked!"


    He cleared the system logs, then wiped the computer, only copying the final observations onto a memory device. He couldn''t let anyone know that he did an unauthorized experiment here. While he ran to the elevator, Robert was already planning on how to reveal his discovery to the world.


    Impatiently he pushed the elevator button a few times, the elevator took its time coming up. While he was going down Robert got a feeling as if he was being watched. There was a camera in the elevator, but it was usually not being monitored. But it somehow felt like a cold gaze was upon him when he looked up into the camera.


    The elevator slowed to a halt at the underground entrance section to the QPA. He got out of the elevator and walked towards the inner part of the tunnel. Robert keyed in the password and the door slid open. A blast of cold air hit his face. It was not that cold but a chill ran down his spine. Something was not right, he was feeling it in his gut.


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    He rushed to the inner part of the tunnel. Although the cold air was blasting from the air vents, the temperature in the tunnel was still quite high.


    Robert entered another password and opened the storage system. Inside was a glass cylinder with a metallic base and top, it had a screen which showed some stats. Although invisible to the naked eye this container was currently confining antimatter. These particles had been prophesied and theorized many times in scientific history, but its existence has never been proven.


    He took the storage container and just as he was about to turn around, the sound of footsteps came from behind him.


    Turning around he saw Stephen standing at the door with a gun pointed at him.


    ¡°Thanks for everything you''ve done, now leave the container and the memory device here, then you can walk away!¡± The scholar and scientific mind that Robert had revered his whole life. The one who spoke of using science for peaceful purpose alone in all the conferences, here he was, standing in front of Robert pointing a gun at him.


    Robert¡¯s thoughts were in a turmoil.¡°How the hell did he get here? Wasn''t he supposed to be away from the premise today?!¡± Then Robert realized he was being watched the whole time.


    ¡°And who are you kidding?¡± Robert thought, ¡°Even if I did all you ask now, it would mean nothing. You won''t leave me alive.¡°


    He saw a murderous aura around Stephen. This invention would change history. It could lead to the development of a new energy source. Or antimatter bombs, much more powerful than nuclear bombs. Either way meant billions or even trillions in royalties for the inventor. Not to speak about fame and recognition. No wonder Stephens coveted it.


    But Robert didn''t want to surrender to fate, instead, he wanted to create his own.


    He took the final decision of his life.


    With a slight smile, he threw the glass container to the ground.


    ¡°This is my life! My work! If I can¡¯t have it no one else can!¡±


    The container fell right between his feet. Matter and antimatter reacted. But instead of the explosion he expected, everything became nothing.


    A void formed at his feet, his body became nothingness. While his consciousness was sucked into the void, his body disintegrated into energy, the energy exploded.


    The last sight Robert had was Stephen disintegrating in the explosion.


    ¡°See you in hell, Stephen...¡±


    He wanted to say that but couldn''t, he wanted to think but he couldn''t.


    He was void,


    he was nothingness,


    only his consciousness remained,


    without being able to feel anything,


    without being able to think anything.


    He was void,


    he was nothingness.


    He drifted into the endless abyss of space and time.


    ¡°Arrrgh...¡±


    Riley took his last breath, he wanted to take another breath but his body wouldn''t listen to him.


    ¡°If I have another life, you devil, I¡¯ll kill you a thousand times over!¡±, he thought. Riley wanted to shout it out, but his tongue wouldn''t move.His lungs felt like they were on fire. His heart beat one last time.


    ¡°Seems like I failed again,¡±An old man, who looked like he was just skin attached to a bony skeleton, said with a sigh.


    His eyes were cold and lifeless, he didn''t even have a strand of hair on his head or face. He was wearing a black cloak. In his hand, he held a silver needle. In front of him, a boy lay lifeless.


    The boy¡¯s arms and legs were strapped onto a bed, his body pierced with countless silver needles, he looked like a human silver porcupine. There was a pool of blood beneath him.


    The old man tried for one last time to pour his energy into the boy, he was doing some experiment. But it was fruitless as always.


    ¡°This is the 97th time milord, should we look for another one?¡±, a man in his thirties with a well-built body asked the old man.


    ¡°I am too tired for another one Yugimi, plus we can¡¯t stay here any longer¡±


    Yugimi didn''t understand why they had to leave now. He couldn''t sense anyone near the old tattered house they were in.


    ¡°They are coming, must be looking for all the disappeared, we can¡¯t risk revealing our identity.¡±


    The old man took a look at the corpse of the young boy and let out another sigh.


    ¡°This time I was really close!¡±


    He raised his arm and a blue stone with a bright core appeared in his hand. After pouring in some energy he tossed it towards the young boy''s corpse. Then he turned around and walks out of the old tattered house, the man named Yugimi followed. Outside of the house, a giant raven was waiting for them. Climbing on this giant bird that radiated a dark aura, they took off into the sky.


    The blue stone fell on top of the young boy''s corpse and its energy flowed into the boy. Its violent energy seemed as if it wished to destroy the corpse of the boy into nothingness.

 Chapter 1 : Transmigration

    Robert had become a dark mass of energy in the void. Darkness surrounded him, there were random white specks of light that made the void look like a starry sky.


    The dark mass that had been Robert Wood wandered aimlessly.


    He could sense a mass of light, like a Will-o''-the-wisp that appears sometimes in a distance, and he followed it into a cloud of dark energy. There were flashes of energy in that cloud. Some as small as distant stars, some as bright as the full moon, but they all dissipated into the darkness exploding like a bright firework.


    He didn¡¯t know how many eons had passed, he didn¡¯t know what those specks of light were. He waited. While it felt like only a second had passed, it also felt like an eternity.


    And suddenly new lights started appearing. They formed a human body and all the major veins and energy channels were ablaze. They didn¡¯t dissipate as fast as the other lights.


    The human-shaped light started to suck in the surrounding specks of light. The dark mass that was Robert was also attracted to them. Another one of this human-shaped energy body appeared and specks of lights started flowing into the body again. Finally, it also started to dissipate. Suddenly an explosion of energy formed near the body. The explosion gave birth to a cloud of light which was absorbed by the body. Vortexes began to form at many points of the body, and everything in the vicinity of them got sucked in. The dark mass representing the consciousness of Robert Wood was also sucked into one vortex.


    ¡°Ah...¡±


    Gasping for air Robert opened his eyes, his body was like a human porcupine, silver needles pierced every inch of his body. The needles were absorbing what looked like a white cloud of mist from a blue stone with the bright core that was lying beside him.


    The world turned dark, again.


    A hand tearing a hole through space pierced Robert¡¯s body with another needle.


    He felt helpless,


    ¡°This must be hell¡°, he thought.


    ¡°If I have another life, you devil, I¡¯ll kill you a thousand times over!¡±


    This voice and the face of a skinny old man, with an expressionless face, was the only thing he was able to perceive.


    Out of the blue, memories of somebody else started flooding Robert¡¯s mind. The last memories were clear as day, the older the memories went the foggier they became, like a foggy night.


    He saw himself being tortured by an old man with a thousand needles.


    While hunting in a lush rain forest, he saw himself being approached by a young man for help and following him into a tattered house.


    Memories continued to flood his consciousness. The memory of that day, then that week, then a month before, on and on it went. The life of a young orphan boy with all its struggles was etched into Robert¡¯s mind.


    ¡°So I am not in hell! Those were just memories!¡°


    It took him a while to understand what had happened. He had somehow transmigrated into the body of a young man called Riley.


    The matter-antimatter reaction, instead of destroying it, sucked his soul into an infinite void. And a weird ritual done by that skinny bald old man had put his soul into the body of Riley.


    Slowly opening his eyes, he woke up to his new world.


    Robert was lying in wooden bed, the dark wooden bed had veins of an amber glow. Lifting his head he saw the walls of a room covered by plants. The different plants grew so thick that they covered every inch of the wall. It was only when he rose up that he understood the warmth of the bed he was lying in. The glowing amber veins had heated up the bed somehow.


    Riley¡¯s memory made it possible for him to recognize some of these plants on the wall as medicinal herbs. He had picked them in the woods to sell them at the pharmacy.


    An orb of light floated in the air above the bed, illuminating the whole room in a warm glow.


    He slowly got up. As he was about to get out of bed a smiling old man, his head bald and beard white, dressed in a snow white cloak, came into the room. Riley¡¯s memory told him that he was the lone healer in this village, Westfae. His name was Gereon, he was a benevolent man who was born in this village and traveled throughout the Lorvale nation to learn the art of herbal medicine. Finally, after mastering the art, he came back to the village to establish a hospital and help the village prosper. The village attracted many people from even distant cities seeking care from Gereon.


    ¡°Oh, you are awake,¡±


    The old man appeared to be genuinely happy that Riley was awake.


    ¡°All thanks to you sir,¡± Robert spoke.


    ¡°No no, this old man did what he could with his herbs but your body was in a dire state. You slept for a month and anything that might have hastened the process along would have been too expensive. You had only one silver with you. All I could do was to give you a safe place in this herb garden. It was only your luck that you got better. ¡± the old healer didn¡¯t hide the truth from Riley.


    Riley''s memories confirmed that. Even if he wanted to get treatment, he couldn¡¯t afford it. Riley didn¡¯t even own anything that he could have pawned to get more money. All Riley had was the hut he lived in and the stuff in it.


    Riley had a well-built body for an 18-year-old guy. His hair color was a mixture of black and red, his eyes were also black with a red tint. He was average looking, in his opinion, but compared with everyone else in the village he certainly was above them.


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    In this world, everyone seemed to possess the power of magic. Although Robert was not sure how it could be explained scientifically, there seemed to be an overabundance of energy in this world. Perhaps it was the dark energy that scientific community had debated in his former world.


    It could be said that Riley¡¯s magic power was normal. He could summon fire arrows which he used to hunt wild animals, but his limit was an arrow every hour.


    This world had wild animals as well as spirit animals. The latter possessed magical abilities. With Riley''s magical power, even if there were ten of him, he wouldn¡¯t be able to even hurt a spirit animal.


    After expressing his thanks, many times, Robert bid his farewell to the elder. ¡°He truly is a benevolent man,¡° Robert noted the help given to him as a debt in his mind. ¡°In the future, when I''m able to, I must repay this debt.¡°


    Robert was at a loss concerning his identity. He had already died, only his consciousness remained, this was Riley¡¯s body. ¡°I also own his memories. So who am I?¡°


    Pondering about it for a while Robert decided to go with the name Riley in this village. ¡°This is not earth. Robert doesn''t belong here. Roberts dream of being a pioneer in the field of physics is gone now. But I''m in an unknown world with nothing holding me back. ¡° A grim expression appeared on Robert¡¯s face. ¡°Except maybe revenge on that old man who tortured and killed Riley,¡°


    After a short pause, Robert added "And all the other innocent people..."


    Gereon had, although hesitantly, told him about the gore the villagers found in the tattered house, and among the dead bodies were 4 of Riley''s friends. Those four were Riley''s only friends. This made all the sweet memories that Riley had with them resurge into Robert''s mind.


    Surviving as an orphan in any world was truly hard, Robert thought about when he was in the orphanage. He had it easy, the orphanage fed him to his fill. The only thing that bothered him there was the absence of kids of his age. To escape from this, Robert had taken the library as his friend. Day and night, he spent there, reading new things.


    The bald old man¡¯s face and the final cry of Riley were forever etched in his mind, he could also imagine how all the other victims felt, he had experienced it first hand.


    Dread, helplessness, anger.


    As he was walking through the village he noticed that most of its houses were made out of logs. Only a few buildings were made with something resembling cement.


    Robert wanted to know more about this world. He wanted to know if he had ]traveled through space and time and, if possible, find out where this world exists relative to his old world.


    Robert spent the silver to buy a few books about this world from a general store that seemed to have almost every merchandise that a village needed. There were light orbs, food grains, magical kilns, cauldrons, basic books of magic, and so on. Riley bought ¡°The history of Eastly continent¡± and ¡°Magic for Dummies¡±.


    The storekeeper gave Robert a strange look when he heard that Robert was there to buy books, but then he broke into a slight smile before taking out the books from a shelf behind him.


    Robert wanted to understand what this magic was, as it seemed to be the base for power in this world.


    The books had thick leather bindings. ¡°Magic for Dummies¡± had runes inscribed in the bindings and the history book had a map of the Eastly continent on its front page.


    After spending a whole night reading the two books, Robert finally understood something about the world, as well as magic.


    The Eastly continent was one of the two main continents humans have discovered. This mega-continent was divided into NorthEastly and SouthEastly. Both controlled by an empire. It had 2 Empires and 21 kingdoms in total. Both these empires were at constant war for centuries.


    The Westfae village existed in SouthEastly, in a Kingdom called Lorvale, the nearest city was Goldfair city. This information was not in the books originally but written by hand in the back of the book.


    ¡°Magic for Dummies¡± introduced him into the world of magic. It had a brief history of magic itself, the main schools of magic and the classification of magic.The magic had many different types.


    The elementary magic consisted of Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Wood.


    Then there were the classes of Light and Dark. While Light added the power of creation to an element, dark added the power of destruction.


    The element was determined at a child¡¯s birth. But the class was chosen by the user. So there existed dark and light magus of each element.


    The light magus of water used their power to heal, while the dark magus of water can create ice spikes that impaled their enemies.


    The light fire magus could purify ores and the dark fire magus would end up destroying it in the process.


    Those who chose the class of creation, had a peaceful life in the cities, while those who practiced dark magic fought for their country.


    There were also different stages of power for magic. Starting with ¡°normal¡±. From there it went to apprentice -> journeyman -> expert -> master. The stages were further divided into 10 levels each. The book also speculated about the existence of higher levels but didn¡¯t into the details.


    Right now Riley was a normal fire magic user level 5.


    Robert willed and formed a small candle-like flame on his index finger and thus used magic for the first time.

 Chapter 2 : Magic!

    A red flame flickered on Robert¡¯s fingertip. Although he had seen it a thousand times in Riley¡¯s memory, he was still amazed by it.


    He wasn¡¯t just mesmerized by the flame, but also by the fact that he could see how the flame formed.


    An invisible energy was drawn from the center of his body. It followed the energy channels, to his fingertips and once there transmuted into a flame.


    What was the difference between light and dark magic?


    The book gave a short description:


    ¡°The difference between dark and light lies in whether one chooses to control their element on a macroscopic scale or on a microscopic level. Growing monster wines, to trap the enemies, requires the use of energy on a macro level, forcing as much growth as possible. Creation of medicine from a herb, on the other hand, requires delicate control over the energy flow.


    To simplify it, a dark magus is able to force as much power as he can in every spell he casts, a dam breaking on command comes to mind. A light magus power is gently persuading minuscule amounts of energy to do his bidding. A man threading the tiniest imaginable thread through thousands of eyes of thousand needles to reach his goal.¡°


    Before he became an apprentice magician, he had to decide upon one direction, whether to focus on raw power or on delicate control.


    The final chapter was about spirit stones and after finishing it his eyes lit up. Spirit stones allowed users to refill their energy. They also acted as an energy source for weapons like magical crossbows and spirit cannons. If he could get his hands on one of those, he had a way to fight even if he were to chose the way of light magi. And the purpose of those weapons was exactly that, to enable non-dark magi to fight.


    ¡°Hmm..¡° Robert thought ¡°I still need more information, about how this world works before I make a decision on which path I choose¡°


    After playing with his fire for some time, his inner physicist told him that the fire on his fingertips was only a mass of hot gas. And the molecules in that mass were moving with so much kinetic energy that it became plasma.


    Suddenly he got an idea. "A flame is just hot gases, what happens when I disperse the flame without increasing the energy?" Robert mused "What happens when I increase the space between heated molecules?"


    He created a fireball in his hand. After that, he split the single flame into two, four, then into sixteen and the fire in his hand became smaller and smaller as they split into thousands of glimmers. He continued to split this glimmers until suddenly the pressure in this palms increased. The exponential differentiation of high energy molecules caused a soft breeze to form from on his hand.


    ¡°Did I just cast air magic? Did I just become a dual element mage?¡° he thought.


    He was not sure if his knowledge of science made it possible for him to be a dual element mage.


    The book on magic he had read said nothing about dual element mages. Maybe there are no dual element mages, maybe it was just out of the scope of this book. He experimented for hours and was finally able to form a wind from his palms.


    What he didn''t know was that the mages of this world already knew about these gimmics, but as they were not useful in anyway and consumed a lot of power, weren''t popular.


    Robert decided to try out other elements. With his understanding of the states of substances, he wanted to see whether he could alter other elemental magic too.


    He filled water from a clay pitcher into a clay bowl. Both were old and had seen better days. The pitcher''s lid had cracks and looked like it would fall apart if handled too harshly.


    Robert summoned another flame on his fingertip. Using his finger like a blowtorch he pointed it at the water and dipped only the flame into it. The water began to heat up. The flame was again split on a molecular level. Now the heat of the flame was equally spread out and soon the water was boiling. He reduced the energy flow and the boiling stopped. He tried to raise the fire molecules and steam welled up from the water. He took control of the steam and like morning fog above a lake, it floated for a few seconds before finally dispersing.


    It worked and didn¡¯t work at the same time. ¡°Well, I can always practice it, there is no hurry.¡° Robert thought.


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    He decided to try earth next. Again he started with the fire, but this time he took another approach. He tried reducing the vibration of the molecules to resonate with the natural frequency of a brick that he had picked up.


    He tried and failed, tried again and failed again. On it went.


    Time went by and sunlight started to peek through the single window of his hut.


    But just like when he was tweaking an experiment in his former life Robert was too engrossed in his work to notice it. And as he was conducting his x experiment the brick started to shake violently and exploded into tiny fragments. He tried the same experiment once again and was able to do it in a few minutes this time.


    ¡°Finally!¡°


    He had a lot more ideas to experiment with, but his angry stomach which hadn''t gotten any attention in a day loudly growled at him. Finally, he decided to stop experimenting with magic and go find something to eat. The few coppers he had left would be enough to get a meal at old man Jia¡¯s shop.


    Robert walked through the streets of Westfae, many people smiled at him on the way, he nodded back in greeting. The healer said that these villagers were the ones who found him unconscious in the abandoned old house outside the village.


    Robert walked into the old man Jia¡¯s shop. It was a small building, one of the few which reminded him of his old world, and had two rooms. One for the customers to eat and the second was the kitchen. He ordered ramen.


    From Riley¡¯s memory, Robert knew that ramen was the only thing he could afford at the moment. Old man Jia placed the hot ramen in front of the hungry Robert. Steam was rising from it and carrying a delicious smell. He even added an extra egg on the house as he knew of the circumstances Riley was recently in.


    ¡°You have any idea who tried to kill you kiddo?¡±, Old man Jia asked Robert as he was about to finish his meal.


    With his mouth full of noodle, he shook his head. He really had no idea who those men were. He had clearly seen the old bald man. But he couldn¡¯t remember any details about the young man¡¯s appearance.


    After finishing the meal, Robert wanted to learn more about the world. He wanted to learn more about magic, but the village had too few sources of information. He even went to pester the storekeeper, Rudo, from the general store. Although he was startled at first, he told him many stories and even narrated some of his adventures to Riley.


    The storekeeper was surprised when Riley approached him with his newfound curiosity about the world. He guessed that Riley, after experiencing the traumatizing feelings of getting tortured by an old bald man, wanted to gain more power or even exact revenge against those who tortured him.


    He explained the wide variety of spirit animals. Those with a thousand eyes, those with nine tails, the legendary spirit animals who slaughtered whole cities in a single night. He told stories about fights between master level magic users in the capital city of Lorvale. About the magic cannons of the Sand nation which kept the advance of the SouthEastly Empire at bay.


    Robert listened to the stories for a few hours before new customers came and the storekeeper had to tend to them.


    After the meal, he was flat out broke. He didn''t even have enough money for the next one.


    He decided to go hunting. But Riley¡¯s fire arrow magic could only be used once every hour. So unless he was extremely lucky and hit something vital, he would only be able to hunt one or two Rabbits a day. At the most. And spirit stones, which would be able to restore his mana, cost about 10 gold. The proceeds of one year of hunting wouldn''t amount to that much!


    Robert decided to take a different approach. On the way to the hunting grounds, he cut off a bamboo-like plant. Like a bamboo, it was hollow inside and was just right for his plan. He prepared darts using some other tree branches. Their size was just right to fill the hole of the ¡°bamboo tube¡°.


    He tested it by blowing into the tube after inserting one of his darts. It worked well and the dart flew from the tube. Robert was happy with the result. But he was not planning on creating blow darts, he was creating a primal version of a gun.


    He prepared five of these tubes and filled them with darts and also made 20 spare darts.


    Robert was all set to hunt!

 Chapter 3 : The hunt

    Robert walked towards Riley¡¯s old hunting ground. He was in a majestic forest. Enormous trees stood tall, like pillars of the heaven, up to at least a hundred meters in height. Thick bushes twice the height of Riley formed the underbrush. A soft wind carried the sweet fragrance of wildflowers.


    ¡°The growth of the flora and fauna in this world seems supercharged, might have to do with the abundance of the dark energy here.¡° Robert thought.


    After walking for half an hour through the dense forest, he reached his goal. It was a meadow with an ocean of emerald grass, bushes of colorful wildflowers made it look like a green silk cloth with jewels sewn upon. According to Riley¡¯s memory, he stumbled upon this place while he was looking for herbs in the forest.


    Dozens of rabbits were running around. Although he knew their real name through Riley''s memory, he couldn''t call them anything else than ¡°rabbits¡° in his mind. In appearance, they were like rabbits but these animals were twice as large as their counterparts on earth and twice as fast. Although herbivores, they would fight when in danger and bite with their incisors. Riley had a few painful first-hand experiences with that.


    Robert carefully made his way towards the rabbit burrows. He stopped some distance away and lay low inside a bush so he wouldn''t alarm the rabbits or drew unwanted attention.


    The village hunters used bows or traps to hunt these giant rabbits. But the agile nature and their aggressiveness made it hard and occasionally painful to hunt them. Also as they weren''t as delicious as the deer and other animals, Villagers have made them only a secondary choice. But if Riley were to step into the forest to hunt deer, with his strength, he would only end up being fodder for the wild animals or the small spirit beasts.


    Robert took out one of the tubes he had prepared. He inserted the index finger of his right hand in one end and a dart into the other. In preparation to not lose the pressure he planned to build up with his right hand, he blocked the hole where the dart went in with his left. He then used the low energy consuming candle flame and quickly divided the flame to micro level to build up the pressure as well as not to burn the bamboo tube.


    After building up pressure he found it hard to keep his finger inside the tube and the dart was vibrating with pressure. Aiming at a nearby rabbit, he released the dart. With a loud pop, the dart flew faster than a crossbow bolt but missed its target by a few meters.


    Hearing the sound, the rabbits became alert and looked up but couldn''t make out the source of the noise and didn¡¯t run away. Robert tried it again and the third shot found its target. More luck than skill, he saw the dart penetrating the rabbit''s head, piercing its brain and killing it. Seeing their comrade fall and no enemy in sight to fight off, all other rabbits ran away. Robert slowly extracted himself from the brush and after collecting his bounty, went off to find another spot where he could hide and pray for another group of rabbits. He had to replace his darts often. Due to the nature of his makeshift "gun", only every third dart flew true. Another problem presented itself in form of exploding Bamboo tubes. Mother nature just didn''t anticipate a guy pressurizing the hollow tubes over and over again. But, ignoring a few splinters in his finger, arm, face and 5 self-induced near cardiac arrests, Robert was happy with his method of hunting.


    After the fifth exploding bamboo tube, however, Robert decided to call it a day. All in all, he shot 17 rabbits freeing them from their boring, peaceful grass munching earthly shackles. To transport his prey back to the village he had brought along a bag. A very big bag. Which he now had to drag back to the village through a forest with dense underbrush.


    The butcher, named Hewie, was amazed by Riley¡¯s haul and gave Riley two silvers for its entirety. That was 30 coppers more than it was usually worth. The going rate for one rabbit carcass was 10 copper. But considering what Riley recently went through, he wanted to help the young man at least a little bit.


    ¡°Poor boy...¡± Hewie said to himself as he watched Riley walk away.


    He felt bad for the boy, being an orphan, growing up was not easy. But these days, after the incident in the abandoned house, he seemed to be different. Unlike his previous self, who tried to survive each day, he now seemed to have dreams and an ambition.


    Robert was beginning to really like the villagers. Although Riley was an orphan and more of a recluse, these people all treated him well and helped him in whatever way they could. The old healer, storekeeper Rudo, Old man Jia, this butcher Hewie and wherever he went, none of them saw him as an outsider. He wanted to bring these people along when he attained a prominent, wealthy position in the kingdom or even the empire. And Robert was determined to gain power and position in this world. That was probably the only way he could get information and exact revenge for Riley on that bald skinny old man.


    Westfae village was pretty peaceful all year round, except when a random spirit animal rampaged through it. Last year two spirit animals attacked the village together. The hunters were helpless and had to hire some higher level magic users from Goldfair. When all hunter of the village worked together they were able to bring down a very low-level spirit animal. But two blue leopards were not something they could handle. In that fight, 3 hunters had died.


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    There was only one dark mage of journeyman level in this village, the village head Heng. The old healer was a journeyman magic user but he was a light wood magus. His hospital was renowned even in the Golfair and a lot of people traveled to Westfae to get treated by him.


    Robert bought another book, called ¡°Level Up !¡±, from the storekeeper, Rudo. It had cost him another 50 bronze and contained the basic methods of meditating with which one could absorb the energy inhabiting this world.


    After he put his change in his pocket his mood soured a bit. ¡°Knowledge seems to be expensive everywhere,¡° Robert thought and let out a sigh. A quarter of his newfound ¡°riches¡° gone just like that.


    He walked along the dirt road to his hut. At the west side of the village was a cluster of huge bushes, a mini forest of bushes really. Riley¡¯s home was in a clearing in the middle of the ¡°bush forest¡°. It was a small wooden cabin with a thatched roof. In the front courtyard was a small garden, filled with plants that Riley has found interesting while wandering through the forest.


    After entering his hut Robert lit up the light orb. This was the cheapest light orb one could buy and could only stay lit for a week before it went out of energy and fell inert. It still cost a silver.Riley scarcely used it as he wasn''t able to hunt the quantities Robert did today and a silver was a lot of money for him. But Robert could allow himself to use it a bit more freely as he made 2 silver today.


    Robert began reading the book ¡°Level up!¡±. It went on and on about entering a receptive state to absorb the energy permeating the world into his body. It was a quite confusing read. But from whatever angle he looked at the information he got, he was sure that they simply described a method of simple osmosis.


    If you took two solutions of salt in water, divided it with a semi-permeable membrane, the water went to where there was more salt. In other words, the water traveled from the solution with higher amount water to the other.


    This type of energy absorption only worked until one reached the apprentice level though. After that one required spirit stones or good cultivation methods to increase the internal energy and breakthrough.


    But Robert had another theory. Energy only flows from a higher concentration to a lower concentration. But once the body was saturated with energy, it would be in equilibrium with the outside world and osmosis would stop occurring. You would need a higher source of energy, like spirit stones, to continue to collect energy, or you had to compact the inner energy which would make it denser. It got costlier with each level. And even the method of compaction of the internal energy wouldn¡¯t work after some time, and that would be the pinnacle of cultivation.


    But Robert was thinking about overcoming that limitation! ¡°According to Einstein E=MC^2, right? Then M=(E/C^2) and if that energy that allows magic to exist is converted into mass and stored, theoretically, wouldn¡¯t the energy storage limit reach a frightening level?¡° The chain of thought gave Robert chills.


    "But doing so would require frightening amounts of pressure and I can only hope to be able to do so in the future." Right now he decided to simply practice the meditation techniques.


    Robert meditated for a long time and finally was able to open some of the pores in the semipermeable membrane that was his body to the energy. He did it with the knowledge he had about the cellular level workings of the human body. He couldn''t imagine how the natives did it. The number of receptive cells in his body increased, and energy started flowing in from the outside world. His speed was below that of genius cultivators but if anyone from his village saw the amount of energy that he was absorbing, their eyes would have popped out of their sockets.


    He remained in that trance meditative state till morning. When he came out of it he realized that his cultivation had reached the peak of the ¡°normal level¡° users. Now he had to choose between delicate control over energy, light, and the brute force approach, dark. After thinking about it for a while, Robert decided to go with delicate control. His thinking was that he could create weapons he knew about from his world to fight. There were even some stray thoughts about armies armed with his weapons marching on his behest. But armed with the knowledge of his world, he would be the best craftsman!


    After practicing his other elementary magic skills for a bit, he became drowsy and decided to go to sleep.


    The next few days passed uneventfully. He would stay at his home practicing with elementary magic and when he was hungry he would go to old man Jia¡¯s shop to grab a meal. On the way back he would often stop by the general store and listen to storekeeper Rudo''s stories of this world.


    After a week he passed through the bottleneck of the 9th level normal magic user. If anyone had seen this speed of cultivation, they would have been frightened.


    But for Robert, it was now only getting tougher to cultivate. He had to either find a way to get his hands on higher energy sources, or he had to find a way to compact the energy within him.

 Chapter 4 : Goldfair city

    A carriage was moving on a trail and at the moment there was a large lake with crystal clear water on its left and a bamboo forest on the right. The whole carriage rattled when it hit one of the many potholes . Robert was curiously taking in the sights alongside the trail while he listened to the stories of the driver. Storekeeper Rudo was now talking about the small alligator-like creatures which lived in the lake. The men from Westfae used to fish at this lake in the past, but one day these mini alligators invaded the pond. Aggressive and hostile by nature they began to hunt any living beings they found. That brought an abrupt end to any fishing.


    When Rudo told Robert that he was going to the city to refill his store¡¯s inventory, Robert asked if he could tag along and Rudo didn¡¯t mind. The journey to Goldfair would take a few hours by cart and having someone to talk to would ward off the boredom that tended to creep up after a while.


    What Robert wanted to see was Goldfair. A city would hopefully provide more information on everything he needs to know, far more than a remote village.


    At one point the trail met with a well-maintained road, akin to the ones the Romans once used on earth. As the journey progressed they passed other small roads and trails similar to the one they used which led to other small villages. Their size telling of the importance of the places they led to. The closer they got to Goldfair the more the traffic increased. Carriages drawn by horses and carts drawn by oxen could be seen. Some lone horserider in dusty clothes were too on their way to the city.


    The horse-drawn carriages were used usually as passenger transport. They were light and fast, there was even a carriage pulled by 4 horses, Rudo said it was a luxury carriage and must belong to some nobles. The ox-drawn carriages were pulled by a dark muscular variety of ox, it had power but not speed.


    When the city came in sight they left the forest they traveled through for the last kilometers and the scenery got replaced with vast fields of paddy. Some fields were green and the plants only a few inches in height while others were fully grown and had golden rice on it. There were wood mages, dressed in green, tending to the plants while water mages, dressed in shades of blue, took care of the irrigation of the field.


    He had also caught a glimpse of a group of earth mages, dressed in brown when they passed by a mine near the woods.


    Passing the vast green and golden fields, they reached the city gates. The city wall formed a giant square, was at least 6 meter high and made out of stone. Taller buildings peaked and looked over it, but what dominated was the skyline by 5 towers. In each corner of the square was one tower, 15 meters tall, plus one at the center of the city.


    Soldiers in tunics patrolled the wall and soldiers in chainmail armor stood guard at the city gate. Though the tunics and armors were uniforms the cloaks the soldiers wore were different in color. Each color signaling to which branch of elemental magic the wearer belonged. As they were soldiers one could safely assume they followed the dark path.


    Rudo ¡¯s carriage was allowed to enter the city without any hitch. Entering the city was stunning. The relative quiet from outside was replaced by a bustling crowd and vendors loudly hawking their wares. It felt like a thunderstorm suddenly took over a, just moments ago, calm ocean. The shops were all filled with many different items. A shop sporting green orbs sold high-quality medicinal seeds while a shop adorned with glowing red orbs sold an assortment of purified ores.


    There was a clear distinction between the elements of magic everywhere in the city and Rudo explained the reason.


    There were two major families controlling the city, the ¡°Flaming Volcano¡° and ¡°Blue Lotus¡°. The ruling families both had two halls as their centers of power. Every hall was dedicated to a single element. The Flaming Volcano had the ¡°Fire Hall¡° and ¡°Earth Hall¡°, while Blue Lotus had the ¡°Water Hall¡° and ¡°Wood Hall¡°. Both families were in a constant power struggle throughout the history of Goldfair. In the process, they eliminated any other faction who tried to compete for the control of the city.


    The vendors who didn''t belong to one of the ruling families were neutral and generally didn''t engage in politics. The bigger merchant families did compete with the ruling families at least in trade as they had the backing to be not afraid. But even for them, politics was a no-go area.


    The carriage proceeded along the paved road, both sides bustling with activity. A few moments later they entered a large open area. Numerous carriages drove there. Some were drawn by horse and some by an ox. A few carriages had animals in front of them Robert didn''t recognize from Earth and Riley had never seen them as well. They had to be spirit animals.


    Two men came to the carriage and asked for the length of our stay. Rudo told them that he wasn''t sure if he would stay overnight. The stable boy told us that Rudo had to rent the box for the horse for the minimum of a day anyway. The other took away the horse into the stable. It reminded Robert of valet parking on Earth.


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    ¡°I have to buy a few things for the store, you wanna come ?¡±, Rudo asked.


    ¡°No, I think I¡¯ll go around the city and see stuff¡±, Robert replied. ¡°If I am not here by the time you want to go home, you can leave without me¡±. Robert was sure that he would be staying here for a while even though he knew that it would be more of a struggle to earn a living here than it would be in Westfae.


    Buying a detailed map of the city, Robert searched for a library that he could read at, but there were none. After asking around, he concluded that the only libraries are privately owned by big families and are only available to their members.


    He decided to go to a nearby bookstore. After getting lost many times and accidentally kicking a golden tailed cat, which bit him in return, he finally reached the bookstore. There was a giant crystal ball at the entrance of the store which projected the books on discount and their prices.


    The titles ¡°Golden grimoire of the flame element¡± and ¡°Theory of ranged magic¡± caught Robert''s eye. His flame was only controllable when it was in his hands. He could cast a fire arrow, but the energy expenditure was too high and thus limited its utility.


    He anxiously waited for the discount to appear and all his hopes were shattered by the price tags. The books he wanted cost 10 golds each and after applying a discount the fire element book still cost 8 gold and the ranged magic book 5 gold.


    The past week was a week full of hunting and all Robert had to show for it was 25 silver. Although the prices were high, he decided to go inside and at least take a look at the books.


    Getting even a glimpse of what is written inside those books may be good enough. A hint here, a snippet of information there might have been all he needed. Being a scholar in his previous life, Robert¡¯s reading speed was quite high. He could finish up reading those long and seemingly indecipherable research papers in a single night.


    Robert walked into the store and past a woman in an emerald cloak who was sitting at the counter. She wasn''t paying any attention to what was going on around her, her gaze fixed upon a book with golden floral designs on the cover.


    Two long wooden bookshelves ran along at either side of the shop''s wall, a third in the middle and a short one decorated with golden ornaments placed in the front. Orbs of bright white light lit the whole store. Seeing this much books together, Robert¡¯s thoughts wandered to his university''s library which he often frequented.


    ¡°Great, now I can take my time to read the books¡±, Robert muttered to himself.


    His joy lasted only moments. Reaching for ¡°Golden grimoire of the flame element¡±, that sat in a shelf that had golden ornamented books, he found out why the woman at the counter could engross herself in a book while ignoring the comings and goings in the store.


    In the center of the book, there was a coffee bean shaped seed. From the seed grew vines to each corner of the book and wound themselves around the edges effectively sealing the book. A coiled vine grew from the upper left corner to the bookshelf, connecting them. They were thick enough to not be ripped off accidentally. Following those vines, with his eyes, he saw a bunch of them spread along the ceiling in the direction of the store clerk. They seemed to originate from her feet.


    ¡°These guys even have an alarm system in place to catch shoplifters¡±, Robert said to himself while turning the book to read its synopsis.


    ¡°Learn to cast the most powerful and energy efficient apprentice level spells. Widen your horizon in flame magic and reach a new level of power. By bestselling author: Professor Heng Ghassan, Ember Magic University¡±


    There is a magic university? Does that mean that there are magic schools too? Robert decided to ask around for more information about them later.


    Then he went to take a look at ¡°Theory of ranged magic¡°. Its synopsis was far better than the other one.


    Robert decided to take a look at the books on the wooden shelves. Fortunately, they weren¡¯t as restricted as the expensive books and had one or two pages not sealed by vines for the customers to read. There were maps, travelogs, story books, mythologies, religious books and so on. He spent almost an hour at the store doing nothing but reading. Seeing the woman at the counter glaring at him from time to time he decided that it was time to leave.


    He left the bookstore and walked through the crowded street. A bit down the street his eyes caught sight of a cannon. Made out of a black metal, it looked the same as old cannons from earth. But instead of a fuse at the end waiting to be lit, there was a metal pin with a flat end, resembling a big nail, sticking out of it. A pile of cannonballs and a heavy hammer lay beside it. The store to which the cannon belonged had a sign over its entrance. The sign read ¡°Black Metal Weaponsmith.¡± It was written with silver paint in a fancy font in front of a black background, a black dragon sat under the writing.


    Curious about the cannon, Robert walked into the store.

 Chapter 5 : Black Metal Weaponsmith

    Entering into a large showroom, the first thing that came to his mind was the word black! Every weapon being showcased here was black, some had a polished metallic gleam to them, others had a rough finish.


    From throwing-knives to multi-barrelled cannons, there was a wide variety of weapons for sale.


    After looking at the price tag attached to the cannon, which called for 500 gold, he decided not to bother the salesclerk of the store.


    There was a catalog on a pedestal near the cannon which surprisingly contained the blueprint for the cannon.


    ¡°They published the blueprint for a weapon that expensive? Wouldn¡¯t everyone who had the money rather produce them themselves instead of buying them?¡±, Robert asked himself.


    The materials, needed to build one cannon, listed in the blueprint, answered his question. The insides of the cannon were lined with a material which could reflect the magic energy and the tip of the nail was a wyvern tooth. Robert couldn''t imagine that the skills needed to work those materials were easy to come by. That required a lot of money to train people and to pay them afterward.


    Rudo had shown him a spirit stone. It was hollow, but the shell was one of the most resilient materials known. As the tip of the nail had to be able to break a spirit stone with one strike in order to release the magic power inside explosively, it had been as hard as a diamond. And to sharpen it had to be even harder.


    Although he hadn''t much practical experience with weapons on earth, his memory was pretty good and he had the general idea about how different weapons works from all the TV shows he had seen and the books he had read.


    The basic principle this cannon worked on was the same a cannon from earth would. A sudden explosive release of energy. But instead of hot gases from exploding gunpowder, these cannonballs were propelled by energy exploding out of spirit stones.


    After looking around the shop and taking a closer look at the firearms, Robert concluded that all weapons used the power spirit stones could set free. None used any kind of chemical reactions.


    ¡°Looking to buy a cannon?¡±, a girl¡¯s voice asked Robert, jokingly.


    Robert turned around to find a beautiful woman in her early twenties, dressed in a black gown with frills. She had an elegant appearance, the contrast of her white skin to the soft black fabric made her beauty stand out even more. The fragrance of some luxury perfume was surrounding her. If she hadn¡¯t been wearing a black dress like all other store employees, he would have mistaken her for princess out for a stroll. ¡°She must be the daughter of the owner or something like that¡°, Robert thought.


    ¡°I can¡¯t even afford one of its wheels !¡±, Robert replied grinning sheepishly.


    ¡°I thought so. But those who are interested in weapons usually only have eyes for the swords and spears, why are you looking at the cannons?¡±, the woman replied while pointedly looking at his clothes.


    She had, correctly, deduced that Robert was not here to buy based on his clothes. How could somebody dressed like a country bumpkin possibly afford 500 gold? And even if he could afford it, why would he want it? It was something used for the defense of castle and city walls or attacking and destroying them. The only ones who bought them were large families, who had private armies, or city officials who ordered them in bulk.


    It was not that she looked down on him, she, having lived most of her life in the capital city, had seen all kinds of people. Some of the most powerful men she knew, were often dressed like your run of the mill commoner.


    ¡°I am just intrigued by them, do you have chemical cannons?¡±, Robert asked.


    The women guessed that he meant alchemy by chemical and was surprised. There was a reason for that reaction. The only alchemical weapons available she knew of were potions. Potions that made people itch, potions that made people cry, potions which exploded on impact. But the theory to use exploding potions to power cannons was still in its experimental stage. How did a country bumpkin hear about it?


    ¡°How do you know about alchemy cannons?¡± the women asked with a frown.


    ¡°I guessed¡±, Robert gave a short reply.


    Guessed? How could one possibly wager a guess like that? The theory of using exploding potions for cannons was not top secret, nor were special measures taken to hide the idea, but it was still far from general information.


    ¡°We weren''t able to build a functioning one as of now. The power generated by exploding potions is too low to propel the cannonballs¡±, the women assumed that the young man in front of her already had knowledge about exploding potions. ¡°His background can''t be as simple as it seems¡°, she thought.


    ¡°Can I see it?¡±, Robert asked curiously. He wanted to see if this exploding potion was similar to a chemical substance he knew on earth. He also wanted to confirm the nonexistence of gunpowder. ¡°Well, there is no harm in asking. If she says no, then so be it.¡° Robert thought.


    But instead of a ¡°No!¡°, like Robert expected, she calmly said ¡°Follow me,¡± and walked to the back of the store.


    Robert was momentarily stunned by the unexpected answer, but his brain caught up and he hurriedly followed her.


    Passing through a door, which had a sign saying ¡°Authorised personnel only¡±, they reached a hall. There were a few weapons in the hall. If not for a 4 barrelled cannon he would have guessed those weapons were damaged goods or something like that.


    Passing another door they got into a room filled with many crystal apparatuses and crystal jars filled with different substances. It was not really different from a chemistry laboratory. There was an old man with a very long beard, wearing a white cloak stirring and heating something in a metal pot.


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    ¡°Old man Isau, it¡¯s been a week, any progress?¡±, the women asked the old man forcefully.


    ¡°Ah, Madam, I am still trying to increase the explosive power of the potion and I am getting better and better results each time I just produced a new batch¡±, he walked to a shelf and took out a crystal beaker. It was filled with a transparent liquid and in the center was a tube filled with a white powder, at the top sat a mechanism to break the inner tube.


    ¡°You have been saying that for months, show me.¡±, her voice betraying anger.


    Isau took a large tube out of the shelf which was constructed similarly to the crystal beaker. The outer tube was filled with a transparent liquid and the inside tube was filled with white powder. He put it into a cannon which stood in a corner of the room. He loaded a cannonball, with difficulty as it was too heavy for him, and hit the nail which was on top with his hand.


    After some time a sound like water boiling could be heard. Then, with a *Pop*, the cannonball was pushed up the tube to the edge of the exit but it didn¡¯t even fall out. The cannonball rolled back down the tube and a milky solution oozed throughout of the cannon.


    ¡°See? The cannonball moved a feet more than last week !¡±, this Isau sure was an optimist Robert thought.


    The loud yelling of the women in answer to Isau''s optimism rang through the hall, but Robert was too distracted to catch the meaning of her words. An earthly smell started to waft through the hall. Although he was not a chemistry expert, he had solid foundations. Something white reacts with a water-like liquid explosively and resulting in a milky solution at the end with an earthy smell. He had already deduced what it was, but he had to ascertain his assumptions. He took a drop of it on his index finger and rubbed it with his thumb before tasting it with the tip of his tongue. It tasted bitter, like an alkali. It was slaked lime! The white powder had to be Quicklime!


    He heard the shouts still ringing in the background.


    ¡°I¡¯ve given you this lab and a hefty salary every month! You even keep the ingredients of the potion secret !¡± , the girl continued to shout.


    ¡°Secret? What secret? When Quicklime reacts with water it creates heat and slaked lime. The heat boils the water and builds up pressure causing the outer tube to explode.¡° Robert thought, whipping himself in an angry mental frenzy. ¡°Is he trying to launch cannonballs with that reaction? What a joke! Even normal people would be able to understand that that reaction did not possess enough explosive power after experimenting with it for a while. And this man! Calling himself an alchemist without even being able to observe this!¡° A sudden thought struck him. ¡°Wait a minute. He is scamming her! That must be it. The salary of alchemists has to be quite high. He found a reaction which builds pressure and he is scamming out as much money for her as possible.¡°


    ?Hey, how much is his salary?¡±, Robert asked her and interrupted the scolding.


    ¡°100 Gold a month, a house, and his meals¡±, she took the opportunity to scold him even more.


    ¡°If I give you the ¡°secret recipe¡± of this potion, how much money will you give me?¡±,Robert asked


    She was stunned for a moment, then said,


    ¡°Well¡­ 500 Gold! And I¡¯ll give you this idiots job.¡±, She pointed at Isau when she said ¡°this idiot¡±.


    She was sure that the young man couldn¡¯t possibly give her the secret recipe and just wanted to use the question to scold Isau once more.


    ¡°Its quicklime¡±, Robert said.


    Hearing the young man in front of her talk, she paused her scolding.


    ¡°Continue,¡± The women said to Robert. She was still unsure if he really knew what he was talking about.


    ¡°You know about limestone?¡±, Robert wanted to make sure that this world had limestone in it.


    ¡°You think you can fool madam with your gibberish? What a joke!¡±, burst out of Isau after hearing the word limestone.


    ¡°Yes I know, ignore this idiot, go on¡±, The girl replied.


    ¡°When you heat limestone in a kiln you will get quicklime. That is the white powder inside the tube and when you mix it with water you will get a reaction. Water will boil, increasing the pressure and pushing the cannonball!¡±,Robert explained


    ¡°How.....how do you know about this? It took me 2 years to find this reaction!¡±, Isau was fuming with anger.


    ¡°That, I¡¯m afraid, I can''t tell,¡± Robert said. ¡°This is basic chemistry you fool!¡° Robert wanted to shout but somehow managed to refrain.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±, the girl asked Robert.


    ¡°Robert. My name is Robert Riley¡±, as he was still uncertain about his name, he decided to add Riley as the last name to Robert.


    The girl took a moment to think. Her ¡°alchemist¡± had already spilled the beans and appraised that what the young man said was true. If he can deduce an alchemical reaction from just the outward appearance of it, his background was certainly not something to look down upon.


    ¡°I am a woman of my word. Robert, if I give you this job, can you make the quicklime cannon work?¡±, The women asked.


    ¡°No, it is impossible to make a cannon work with this formula. But I do have a recipe which would work !¡±, Robert explained.


    ¡°Really?¡±


    ¡°Yes¡±


    ¡°Then you can come work for me tomorrow and live where this guy was living until now. Isau you are fired!¡±


    She thought that Robert must have a deep understanding of this art and wanted to give him a chance.


    Robert was amazed by the speed of things happening to him just now. Did he just get a job, netting him 100 gold per month? Free lodging? Free food? Robert was still mentally reeling and failed to notice the angry eyes of Isau glaring at him.

 Chapter 6 : Boom !

    After searching high and low, Robert found sulfur in an Apothecary''s store.He had forgotten which other uses sulfur had, besides going boom in concert with other ingredients. This made Robert go to each shop describing its properties, in hopes of finding it. The Apothecary had a sack of sulfur in stock and he bought it all.


    Robert ignored the questioning look of the Apothecary and walked out of the store, with a sack of sulfur in his back.


    Robert knew that saltpeter, the most important ingredient for creating gunpowder was used for food preservation. He bought a sack of saltpeter from a food store. The next one was the easiest to acquire. He bought the required charcoal from a charcoal burners shop.


    Robert remembered that the ratio with which the ingredients needed to be mixed to create gunpowder was around 6:1:1. He had made some as a fun project when he was 10, but he had forgotten of which ingredient he needed 6 parts of. He brought all the stuff to his new home. It was a spacious house, big enough for a family of 4 to live in. Being near the center of the city it would cost him at least 20 gold per month to rent. A small room had already been converted into an alchemy laboratory by Isau, which Robert was thankful for.


    He ground the 3 raw materials with mortar and pestle into a fine powder and put them into 3 bowls. After that, he combined them in three different approaches. One with more charcoal, one with more sulfur and the last one with more saltpeter. Spreading the resulting powder on a paper, he lit each one and observed the results. And, as always, the last mixture was the right one. Six parts saltpeter, one part charcoal, and one part sulfur. But to ignite it inside of a cannon he would need a fuse. Thus he cooked a rope in a saltpeter solution.


    After using up his stock of ingredients he spent the rest of the night training his magical elements.


    In the next morning, Robert walked into the weapon shop carrying a bag of black powder. At Seeing Robert, Sophy, who wore a similar gown as she did yesterday, walked up to him.


    ¡°You sure are punctual!¡± She greeted him or didn''t. ¡°How many days will it take you to create the recipe?¡±


    ¡°I already made it. Is there any outdoor testing ground here?¡± Robert was afraid to experiment with the cannon indoors as he was sure it would leave a hole in the wall, or even explode and destroy the building.


    ¡°You¡¯ve already made it?¡±, she paused for a moment before continuing, ¡°There is a firing range in the backyard¡±


    Sophie was quite surprised by the fact that this young man had already created the thing he said he would. Although he had already identified Isau''s formulae, she was still a bit suspicious of this young man.


    ''Well let''s see what he can do'' Sophy thought this as she walked with him to the back.


    She leads him to an open area behind the shop. It was a small ground, enclosed by a stone wall which was almost 5 feet thick and had a target marked in the middle, cracks in the wall were spreading from it. There were spirit cannons lying around, big and small.


    Robert went back into the alchemy laboratory and rolled the cannon Isau used for demonstrations out. Every single worker present had to help move the heavy black metal canon. After positioning the cannon he removed the smashing nail and put in a bag of gunpowder. This place was normally reserved for spirit stone, but he had no intent to use one. Robert loaded the cannonball into the barrel. He then used the nail he removed earlier to prick a hole into the gunpowder charge and inserted the fuse into the newly made hole.


    As it was his first time firing a cannon, he wasn¡¯t sure if it was going to work or if the barrel was able to withstand the pressure and not explode.


    He told everyone to get to a safe distance before lighting the fuse and running the hell away from the cannon. The fuse burned slowly into the barrel and


    ¡°BOOM !¡±,


    an explosion rang out. The cannon spits fire and a split second later, the cannonball inserted itself into the wall, missing the target by a meter. But new spiderweb-like cracks had formed underneath the cannonball.


    The spectators stood dumbstruck. Even a large caliber spirit cannon was unable to deal this much damage to the wall and so they thought in unison ¡°What the hell ?!¡°


    He didn¡¯t even need to experiment and find the formula through trial and error? He must either be an alchemy genius or might even be the student of some great alchemy master! Sophy¡¯s impression of Robert skyrocketed with this one demonstration.


    After recovering from the shock she had received by what had transpired, Sophy quickly asked Robert.


    ¡°Where did you get this potion from? How much Gold for the secret? ¡±, she was already calculating the profits which could be made selling those cannons! This could indeed be the next generation of weaponry. She could envision these beasts roaring in unison in a battlefield and drowning the enemy soldiers in fear.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry but I won¡¯t sell the secret¡±, Robert replied with a slight smile.


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    ¡°What then?¡±, Sophy wasn''t sure what he planned to do with such a recipe if he wasn''t going to sell it.


    ¡°I will sell the ¡®gunpowder¡¯, 5 gold a pound! And from each cannon you sell, I get 50 percent of the profit¡±


    ¡°So, this potion is called ¡°gunpowder¡° ?¡° Sophy was about to say something else when Robert continued speaking.


    ¡°You¡¯ll also have to provide me with a factory to produce the gunpowder at a large scale and get me the raw materials required for the production¡±


    Sophy was about to negotiate the price when Robert talked again,


    ¡°I also need a laboratory and you have to help me obtain many different rare materials¡±


    Seeing that Robert would go on and on, demanding more and more if allowed, she quickly said


    ¡°Alright, alright! I will arrange a laboratory and a factory. And I can bring you in contact with people who can acquire materials for you¡±, she paused for a second thinking and then continued.


    ¡°But 50 % is too much, how about 25%?¡±


    Robert pondered the counteroffer for a while, ¡°I will need her help to create more weapons in the future. And she must have a powerful family behind her when she is running a business this big and successful at this young age. And it was not just any business, she was in the cutthroat business of weapons dealing.It is better to give her the upper hand for now.¡±


    ¡°30%,¡± he said out loud.


    ¡°Alright! 30% it is,¡± Sophy replied.


    ¡°Did I give in too fast?¡° Seeing her decisiveness Robert wasn''t sure if he gave up too much too soon.He was not well versed in business or doing deals. He had spent most of his life as a scholar, and what he valued most was knowledge rather than money.


    After finishing the deal and getting a check about 1000 gold as his advance, he asked her if she could introduce to a library. To his surprise, she invited him to her home.


    Riding in a 4 horse-drawn carriage, they reached the front of a large mansion. But it had more in common with a castle than a mansion.


    The words ¡°Black Dragon ¡± were painted in black on the stone walls. There were guards with crossbows on the wall and the gate to the mansion had a few guards armed with swords. They were wearing shiny black armor.


    ¡°This family is totally obsessed with the color black.¡° Robert was at a loss what to say or think about that.


    The guards opened the gates and let them pass as soon as they saw Sophy. They bowed to her as the carriage passed by them. As soon as they left the entrance the gate closed again behind them with a loud noise.


    Robert¡¯s intuition about Sophy¡¯s background seemed to be right on point. A path stretched through a garden, which looked like an ocean of flowers, the sweet scent of medicinal plants was in the air. The carriage stopped at the front doors of the mansion. Getting out of the carriage, they walked through the front doors, entering the mansion.


    It was as grandiose on the inside as it was on the outside. The floor was polished stone, at the ceiling hung chandeliers made out of light orbs. The walls had a mural of a giant black dragon, the depiction was so realistic it felt as if the dragon was about to fly out of the wall.


    Seeing Robert¡¯s astonished expression, Sophy said slowly. ¡°This is the Goldfair branch of the ¡®Black Dragon¡¯ family, my house is in the capital city.¡±


    ¡°How can a branch have a mansion this big? What exactly is her background? And why would she be here if her house is in the capital city?¡° Robert thought.


    ¡°We have 25 shops here, conducting various businesses and our weaponry is the best in Goldfair city.¡± She explained as they walked up the stairs to the second floor.


    ¡°She thinks highly of herself and her clan¡° Robert nodded in understanding.


    She went on explaining about the Black Dragon businesses in Goldfair but didn¡¯t talk much about her own origin. The mysterious air around her made Robert believe that her position in the clan was not something to be looked down on. She leads him to a room filled to the brim with books, seeing that Robert unconsciously broke into a smile.


    He spent the rest of the day reading books. Books on alchemy, books on herbs, books on whatever caught his interest. He was trying to absorb as much knowledge as he could from these books.


    Night fell and a maid brought him food. But he was too engrossed in reading ¡°The history of magic¡± to even notice. The maid had also brought a light orb as the old one in the library wasn''t working. She thought the young man must have stopped reading as it got dark but Robert was still reading using a candle flame on his index finger.


    Robert spent the whole night in the library and would have read the whole next day too if he weren''t dragged out by Sophy to demonstrate the workings of the cannon to an audience.


    ''Another bookworm?'' Sophy knew many men like this, most of the scholars and alchemists who did research for the Black Dragon clan was also like this, forgetting about everything when reading books.


    Sophie also knew how to manage them, she just had to drag them out into the limelight.

 Chapter 7 : Sophy

    The firing range had a dozen people waiting when Robert came in with Sophy. The old man Naoki, manager of Black Dragon Goldfair branch was also with them. Robert was angry at that man as he was responsible for Robert getting dragged down here by Sophy.


    Naoki had the looks of a wise old man, his silver hair and beard showed his age, but his eyes shone with wisdom. Taking with this man, Robert did n¡¯t particularly like this grumpy old fellow. He had the air of command that was required to run the whole business of the Black Dragon clan in this city.


    This man was seen shouting at the workers of the weapon shop as they Robert was coming in. This was because the workers had moved the cannon that was in front of the store a few feets into the shop while arranging the displays.


    ¡°The cannon is placed out there in the street for a reason you fools, were you so tired to move it a few feets out? Didn¡¯t you guys have your meal this morning?¡±


    He waited for a second, and seeing that the men were just standing there like idiots, he yelled at them


    ¡°What the hell are you waiting for? Move it!¡±


    The employees all ran off to change the position of the cannon. Some even stumbled on the way from looking back at Naoki.


    The people waiting in the firing range were clearly of the two main families and other large business families.


    They all talked merrily with Sophy and Naoki, Robert was simply ignored. He wanted to stay that way, as he had no means of protecting himself if he is attacked by some powerful magicians. Not to mention the thought of getting tortured for information.


    He had already taught a store employee to fire the cannon and was only there to oversee things.


    After fifteen minutes and firing the cannon three times, All the men were staring at the cannon with stunned looks. Even those four men from the large families who had seen large spirit cannons were amazed by the firepower of this cannon.


    Old man Naoki had a slight smile on his face, he was deep in thought, probably thinking of a way to make the most money out of these people.


    Suddenly a man dressed in scarlet spoke up.


    ¡°What a great cannon! It works with fire magic, I would like to add this to our Flaming volcano family¡¯s arsenal, say manager Naoki, how much does it cost?¡±


    Naoki shook his head and said,


    ¡°It is all madam Sophy, I have no part in this invention¡±


    All the eyes focused now on Sophy and the man dressed in scarlet facing Sophy said,


    ¡°No wonder! Its Madam Sophy¡¯s invention! The daughter of the clan leader of Black Dragon is truly skillful¡±


    Daughter of clan leader? The books from the library had information on the major clans in the country, and Black Dragon was one of the four great clans of the Lorvale nation. Being the daughter of the clan leader of such a clan, what kind of background was it!


    Robert had guessed that she had a high position in the clan. But he never imagined that she will be the daughter of the clan leader! What was she doing in a small city like Goldfair? And why would she spare time to talk to a random stranger in her shop?


    ¡°It was not me, I came across a master alchemist, he is the one who made this fire cannon¡±, Sophy also shook her head not accepting the praise.


    She could have easily accepted the praise and took credit for the invention. But she was not someone who did things like that. And she had many uses from Robert, this young man could be a great asset to have. Sophie thought while refusing the credit for the invention.


    ¡°Oh! Is it possible for us to meet this master? We the Blue lotus family would love to have him as a guest¡±


    Although sure of refusal, one of the representatives of the Blue Lotus family asked Sophy.


    ¡°I am deeply sorry Danyal, but this master does not like meeting with people, much less being their guest. I apologize for it.¡±, sophy quickly refused the invite.


    What a joke, inviting as a guest? These guys are sure trying to rope him in. We should keep info on Robert a secret.


    ¡°Oh, no wonder. It is only natural that someone like that is aloof of social aspects. Can I ask for his name?¡±, The man called Danyal wanted to at least know the name of this man to get his background information.


    ¡°It-It¡¯s Blaze, Black Blaze¡±, Sophy made up a name on the go. Although she had certain morals that she followed on business, withholding certain information for her own good was nothing outside of those morals. She had to run a business, what would be of her if she was to reveal all the trade secrets to everyone?


    ¡°Black Blaze. I see, ¡± pausing for a while, he continued,


    Black blaze? It must surely be a name that was made up by her to hide this expert¡¯s real name. But he could do nothing other than accepting it. Although she had no power now, she was the daughter of the clan leader of the Black Dragon.


    ¡°Our water and wood magic is incompatible with this weapon, thanks for giving us a splendid show though, we will be on our way.¡± He was about to turn around to leave when Sophie spoke out


    ¡°Wait a moment Danyal, this cannon have nothing to do with magic!¡±


    She explained the gunpowder to them, and they decided to stay. Not having a weapon this destructive was truly something they couldn¡¯t afford to do. And their eternal rivals were here, looking to multiply their firepower.


    After a round of fierce negotiations, the cost of a cannon was set at 1000 Golds. A round of charges cost 10 golds, the same amount required for a spirit cannon.


    Manager Naoki truly lived up to his reputation and managed to raise the price to a good point without making the other party lose out. He had already calculated the price to quantity ratios and gave the other parties a good bargain.


    They already got an order for 20 of those cannons when the last person had left.


    And almost all of them had wished good health to Sophy¡¯s father.


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    After asking manager Naoki, Robert understood what was really going on and why Sophy is in this small city instead of the capital.


    Sophy¡¯s father Lucio had been poisoned and is now in a coma, the Black Dragon clan had been taken over by his younger brother Luca. After getting the control of the family he immediately sent Sophy into the smallest city that had a branch of Black Dragon clan. There was no way she could fight against it.


    It was not that she didn¡¯t have a way to fight it, it was that she was unwilling to. There was a lot of her father¡¯s supporters that will rally behind her if she truly wanted to fight against Luca. But she didn¡¯t want to do anything that harmed the integrity of the family, let alone split the family. She wanted to gain respect and power within the family without rebelling directly. She was almost certain that the one that poisoned her father must be Luca. But she couldn¡¯t point her fingers without enough evidence.


    She had brought her dad along with her on this exile and made sure that he couldn¡¯t be harmed by Luca anymore. She waited for the right oppertunity to strike at Luca.


    Robert showed a sad face on the outside. It was not that he didn¡¯t feel bad for Sophy, but the happiness that he has gotten from this golden opportunity to raise up made him happy. If I could get her to win back her position on the clan it would raise me up to the upper strata of society as well!


    Robert was not somebody who will do anything for the reason of pure benevolence. It has always been his motto to only do something if it really benefitted him. He was no altruist, he will exploit every opportunity to rise up. He didn¡¯t mind someone else growing with him though. Like now, both Sophy and he will gain from the partnership, and if they could keep up this symbiotic relation, it would lead to both their growth.


    Robert spends his rest of day reading in the library. For the onlookers, it might seem mundane, but Robert was visualizing the great war of SouthEastly and NorthEastly nations. The heaven shaking war with heavy weapons and spirit animals.


    He also read the books on star maps and astronomy to find if he was at least in the milky way galaxy and it was a fruitless effort. This world¡¯s sun was almost identical to Earth¡¯s sun, but there were 13 planets in this solar system. Robert also took into account that this world has not yet created telescopes, so he was sure that there were more planets to be discovered.


    He slept that night like a baby, he was still sleep deprived and tired from the reading last night. And when he woke up it had already been noon in the next day. He decided to spend that day to test out more theories about magic. He went to the inner garden of the Black Dragon residence.


    Situated in an opening in the middle of the mansion it had a pond in the middle. There were some lotus flowers in the pond, and plenty of medicinal plants growing in the garden, their aroma thickly filled the air.


    Although he had success with air magic, he was still having trouble with all the other elements. He could create a strong wind with his hand now, but that was about it. He could raise vapors from water, that was the limit of his water magic. He could break bricks with his hands, and that was the limit of his earth magic. But he was still to find any success in doing wood element magic.


    Robert wanted to observe how exactly is his body able to convert the mysterious dark energy into flames. He thus had asked for the fire mages at Black Dragon¡¯s crystal shop to make him some lenses. He intended to create a microscope with them. Hopefully, it is only a cellular level process, if he wanted to see anything smaller, it would require a scanning electron microscope.


    There was nothing that he could do until he found how this dark energy was being converted to different elements. So Robert decided to leave the science behind for a moment and use this world¡¯s magic techniques to make some improvement in power.


    He lit the candle flame in his index finger and started switching it into the middle finger. The flame disappeared with a pop from his index finger and then slowly appeared on his middle finger. Then he did the opposite, switching the flame from middle finger to index finger. Slowly the frequency of shifting decreased and after images of flame started to appear in both fingers.


    This was the 1st step in increasing the power of the flame. But Robert understood the problem with this method, the energy output was relative to the frequency of shifting of the flame. Sooner or later there will be a limit to the maximum frequency one can control. He tried to meditate and get a feeling of the energy. A book had said that he could try to feel the energy cycle in the body which will help him improve the magic output.


    Entering into a trance state, he concentrated solely on his breath. The natural process of energy inflow, and after a while, he could visualize energy flowing into his body with each breath he takes. An hour had passed when he was able to finally sense an energy all over his body. The highest concentration of this mysterious energy was in the left chest region. And the energy distribution vaguely reminded him of the blood circulation system!


    Does this mean the dark energy is carried by blood, like oxygen by red blood cells?


    He wanted to confirm this as soon as possible because this opened up a whole lot of room for different theories. Maybe there are different types of blood cells like blood groups that make it possible for the difference in elements of magic. Does it mean the spirit animal blood can be used to store magic energy? What if there are cells that convert magic energy to different elements? If so can he force blood into some spirit animals severed digit and make it form a flame? Like a dragon head flamethrower, or a sea-wyvern water cannon.


    The possibilities made him let out an evil grin.

 Chapter 8 : Secrets Of Magic

    Robert was busy for the next few days he had to oversee the production of cannons as well as building a factory for the production of gunpowder. Sophie had plans to sell the cannons in large scale and had already sent the word to big families and Knights who had a private Army.


    Finally the day Robert was waiting for has arrived. A messenger has brought him a package which had the lenses that he ordered. He had also ordered a frame which he designed to create a microscope.


    He fixed the lenses into the frame, these crystal lenses were not as good as the ones from earth but he had no other choice. Fixing a mirror in the bottom of the microscope, he directed the light into the specimen in a crystal slide.


    He had prepared an onion skin for his first observation. after tweaking for a while he was able to get a clear picture of the cells and realized that he had made a mistake. He forgot the fact that he should be dyeing the cells before he could observe it. He was not a Biology major and had no idea what dye was used for this purpose.


    He took a specimen of his blood and observed it under the microscope. He saw hundreds of little doughnut-like red cells and random big white cells, these were the expected ones. What surprised him was the presence of some half moon shaped cells.


    These were black in color and had the same size of red blood cells. His knowledge in Biology was limited, but he knew the cells in human blood, the doughnut-like red blood cells, the soldier white blood cells, and the platelets that were not visible under this microscope.


    He realized that his intuition had more chance of being right now. If these cells are the basis of magic then wouldn¡¯t its number increase as the magic power increase? To draw the right conclusion, he needed more blood samples.


    And soon, the maids and guards of the mansion were complaining to manager Naoki about the young man going around and asking for their blood. Some even doubted that he was a vampire.


    And soon Robert appeared in front of Naoki,


    ¡°Manager Naoki! I was looking for you¡±, Robert smiled and said.


    ¡°...¡±, Naoki deduced the reason for him coming to him, It must be to apologize for pricking all the maids with a needle. He kept a poker face.


    ¡°It¡¯s about-¡±, Before Robert could continue, Naoki spoke up.


    ¡°Blood?¡±


    ¡°Yes! I didn¡¯t think manager Naoki was this wise¡±, Robert was genuinely surprised that Naoki guessed the reason why Robert went to him.


    ¡°Hmm. It¡¯s okay this one time. Don''t repeat it!¡± Naoki was not too happy with what Robert had done, is he crazy? To go around asking for blood from everyone? But he assumed that it must be for something important and thus decided to ignore it this one time.


    ¡°Thanks, manager Naoki¡±, Saying this Robert walked closer to him and drew a silver needle from its bamboo covering.


    ¡°He must be so afraid that he is surrendering with his weapon,¡± Naoki thought.


    Naoki stretched his arm to receive the needle, but instead of placing it, Robert poked a hole in the right index finger of Naoki.


    Naoki who was not on guard, and definitely not expecting to get pricked by a needle let out a loud cry.


    ¡°Aah! You- why did you do that?¡±, Naoki asked angrily, looking at his bleeding finger.


    ¡°You just said it was okay to take your blood, right? And you even showed me your arm to give me blood¡±, Robert feigned innocence.


    Naoki was at a loss whether to laugh or cry. He had assumed that Robert was here to apologize and agreed to what he was about to say and even showed him his hands before hearing it. Who would have thought that he was here to poke me with a needle, I am the manager of this Black Dragon branch!


    Understanding the misunderstanding, Robert slipped away rather quickly. But he didn¡¯t forget to get a drop of Naoki¡¯s blood before running away.


    This guy! I should be careful around him from now on. And what the hell is he going to do with my blood? He is not going to do some black magic right? Naoki was still not sure of what to think of this man. He had given them a huge business opportunity by giving them the rights to sell the cannons that he had invented. But at the same time, his personality was too eccentric. He spent all his time in the library or laboratory, and at times went around asking for blood.


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    Robert collected many blood samples and was looking at each labeled crystal slide, he found that his speculation has been true. As the magic power increase, the number of these strange black cells also increased. He also found that these cells had different tints, he had a red tint, a wood mage had a green tint, water magus had a blue tint.


    Does this mean that he can transfuse some other blood and get that elements magic power? The curious evil scientist in Robert woke up.


    He went to market looking for spirit animals as lab rats. Taking a drop of a maids blood and adding a drop of another maid, he observed the results under the microscope.


    And soon, the red blood cells started bursting, and finally, the blood clotted completely.


    ¡°as expected.¡±, Robert saw the reaction under the microscope and said with a sad tone.


    Well if it was that easy to do this then what fun is in it, Robert thought.


    He now wanted to find if these cells can exist together. But for that, he will need a centrifuge and lots of human blood!


    An image of an evil mage draining blood from humans that he has slaughtered appeared in his mind.


    ¡°I can¡¯t become someone like that,¡± he said to himself, shaking his head.


    He had to find a way to get more blood. And his mind could be at ease only if the blood was volunteered.


    Next morning in the free for all market, a man dressed in a black cloak and red face mask appeared in a corner. He had a board that read:


    ¡°Buying your blood, 1 gold for a bowl¡±


    This caused many heads to turn, who is this guy, and why would he need human blood?


    ¡°Is he a cannibal?¡±, someone whispered in his friend¡¯s ear.


    ¡°could be an evil wizard looking to do some evil magic,¡± someone else said.


    Although he got the attention of most people, they were too scared to give him any blood. Only a soldier, stumbling out from a gambling shop came and gave him 3 bowls of blood.


    Seeing that he was having no luck, Robert decided to stop this act. Even if he got blood, the concentration of the magic blood cells will be too low, it was not affordable.


    He decided to use his plan B.


    Walking into a large auction house, which had a huge board reading ¡°Spirit Auction Center,¡± he searched for spirit animal blood. And when he found it, he was surprised at the price. Not because it was too high, but because it was too low.


    ¡°1 gold for 1 pot fiery bear blood¡±


    Seeing that price, he asked the man nearby about the low price and got the answer, it was useless, it¡¯s too sour to be used as food or medicines, it had no energy in it.


    Robert couldn¡¯t help but smile at his fortune. Although he was not sure if it will be compatible, his ideas were seeming more and more plausible now.


    He spent 20 golds on acquiring different types of blood. He hoped that there were no antigens in the magic cells of animals. If he could inject himself with these cells and become a true multi-elemental mage, that would be awesome.


    After getting all the blood to his home, he decided to make a centrifuge. He didn¡¯t want anyone to know what he was doing and decided to completely make it himself.


    He made a gear mechanism which can revolve three thousand times a minute and prayed for it to work.


    After observing the spirit animal¡¯s blood, he was reassured about his assumptions. The same blood cells were responsible for the magical property in every organism. Still, this doesn¡¯t mean he could simply inject that blood into his blood and become powerful. There existed a hurdle namely antigen-antibody reaction. The chance he can inject the blood of these animals to his body was close to nill.


    If he wanted to do that he will truly require a baptism in human blood.


    What Robert was trying to do now was to separate this blood and mix the magic cells with different blood samples he had, and hopefully one will work.

 Chapter 9 : True dual element mage!

    Chapter 9: True dual element mage!


    The centrifuge started to rotate with a buzzing sound, inside it was the blood of fiery bear in two test tubes. As he didn¡¯t have the help of modern-day technology like electric motors or gasoline engines. He had to default to manpower for running the centrifuge. Robert rotated the gear for ten minutes and finally opened the lid of the centrifuge.


    Taking out the test tube, he saw the blood differentiated into 4 different colors. black, red, white and a transparent liquid. Taking the black liquid with a deep red tint, he diluted it with water and used the centrifuge again. after separating the black cells alone in a test tube after a few rounds, he began mixing it with different types of blood.


    ¡°YES!¡±, Seeing the results of his experiment, he couldn¡¯t help but shout!


    None of the blood samples clotted or gave any sort of negative reaction. This meant that body wouldn¡¯t reject these cells!


    He ran off to get some test animals and a syringe. Even Though he couldn¡¯t find an exact syringe, he acquired a glass tube used to remove cataracts from eyes. Injecting some magic cells into a rat, he waited for results. After a few minutes, the rat began to run around, and suddenly its tail caught on fire! He expected the rat to burn itself, but it was just curiously checking out the new addition of fire to its tail.


    He waited for a day before the fire finally went out, still, the rat was very much alive! He gave the rat another dose, if the cells have some kind of antigen in it, then this time the rat was sure to die. He waited and suddenly the tail of rat again caught on fire, still, it didn¡¯t get sick or die.


    Hell yeah!


    The experiment was a success and a huge success at that! He had found a way to cultivate multiple magic elements. And a truly easy way at that!


    But what he didn¡¯t know was that without his basic biology and physics knowledge, there was no way he could have separated the magic cells from the blood and use it. The separation required the knowledge of cell theory and centrifugal forces. The creation of centrifuge needed the knowledge of mechanics.


    He spent the rest of the day making monsters in his lab. An ordinary bird was set ablaze like a phoenix, a turtle turned into a Squirtle, and his fire tailed rat made the earth move.


    He now wanted to test on humans, there was no way he would test on somebody innocent, so he decided to try it on himself. taking a new syringe and filling it with earth element magic cells, he pierced his vein on his forehand and injected the contents into it.


    Suddenly he felt a surge of power inside him, and he could feel the earth around him! He felt the presence of ores inside the earth and he could see that the earth seemed like it was anxious to receive a command from him. He felt that he could will and move the earth in front of him!


    He had become a true earth mage! He also broke through a level just because of this.


    Robert spent the rest of his day experimenting with his newfound power. Moving boulders and exploding them, he then tried to extract minerals from inside rocks. But it seemed that his earth affinity was too low.


    He decided to wait for a whole day before taking another dose and took the second one in a smaller dose. Seeing that there were no side effects he took another dose. He was happy with the results, his cultivation also increased by 2 levels and he directly became a level 4 apprentice magic user!


    Still, he was not overjoyed. There was a limit to the amount of cells he can inject himself with. If blood gets too thick from the cells, it would even give him a heart attack! He had to find another way to increase his elemental affinities other than flooding his blood vessels with more and more cells.


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    He went to the auction house again to acquire some high-level animal blood, but there was none. The auctioneer said that these high-level blood even though sour was high in medicinal property and thus was rare to come by. The only way to acquire these were by going to hunt them by oneself.


    And with his level, let alone hunting them, even hurting these animals can be said to be remarkable. So he decided to shelf the idea until he has more firepower.


    Robert levitated a rock in palm and tried to add fire to it, after a while, the rock melted into red-hot lava. He had chosen the path of light magi, and haven¡¯t yet practiced any of those magic. The molten rock divided into different ores and materials and it all floated in his hand. Usually, the melting was done by a fire mage and the separation by earth mage, but he could do both these now.


    After that he took a block of metal that he picked up from Sophy¡¯s store, it was black metal. Heating up the metal, it soon began to glow red hot. Robert continued to pour more and more energy into it. After a while, the snow globe of molten metal started to give out an yellow and white light. Soon there appeared random sparks from the impurities getting obliterated.


    He spent the rest of the day purifying the black metal. It was not something other fire magus cannot do, but he just wanted to practice his control over the magic power.


    The next day, a family from the next city ordered 50 gunpowder cannons. Sophy was so happy that she invited him to leave his house and go live in the mansion. But Robert said it was alright and he just wants a place to stay and the one he had now was more than enough. But the truth was that he didn¡¯t want anyone to know his secrets.


    What would anyone think if you start to bring barrels of animal blood to your home! And not to mention the weird contraptions that he creates.


    Robert decided to create a gun with the purified black metal he has created. Manipulating the black iron first into a sheet of metal and then bending it into forming a pipe, he created the gun barrel. Although he wanted to add rifling to increase accuracy, his control was not that good, so he left it for later.


    He didn¡¯t want to create a single shot rifle as it was too troublesome to load. He didn¡¯t have the schematics of a revolver or a pistol with him either, and those required some research. So he decided to create something that he had wanted to create in his childhood, a Penta barreled shotgun!


    He could create a revolver like a cartridge that is top loaded and use his fire magic to ignite the gunpowder.


    He created four more of those barrels and welded them together forming a Penta barrel structure. Then he created a frame to hold the cartridges and then created a 5 round holding cartridge.


    Filling the cartridge with gunpowder and metal balls, he sealed it up with paper. Robert¡¯s intention was to heat up the metallic back of the cartridge and thus ignite the gunpowder, propelling the shotgun shells outwards. He had absolutely no skill with shooting and with this large 5 barrel gun, he chose the buckshot to have a higher chance of the shot finding the target.


    With a few cartridges of this, he will be able to hunt spirit animals way above his level!


    After successful test firing of the 1st cartridge, he made 5 more of them. Each time he test fired all the bullets, and then refilled them again.


    He now had a 5 shot shotgun and 20 extra ammo. It¡¯s time to go hunting, again!

 Chapter 10 : Naoki鈥檚 appraisal

    Attaching a belt to the gun, Robert hung it on his back. He noticed a problem with the gun, he had made thick barrels and five of them at that, thus it was too heavy. Deciding to do some more experiments on the strength of the black metal later, he hung the cartridges into his waist. It was only now that he realized something.


    When he was increasing the power of the gun and making it able to fire more rounds, he had forgotten to take his weak physique into consideration. Ah, this Riley is too weak, he couldn¡¯t even carry a 10-kilogram load. Robert sighed, I should train my body a bit too.


    He got out of his home still struggling with the heavy load and got into a horse carriage. Sophy had arranged him this for moving around in the city.


    Stopping by the Black dragon mansion get a guard or two to accompany him on the hunt, all he got was get shouted at by manager Naoki.


    ¡°Going to hunt spirit animals as a measly apprentice magic user? Are you asking to get killed?¡±


    Asking this, Naoki was genuinely expressing his feelings towards Robert. Although he was at times eccentric, Robert had given them new business opportunities and thus was an asset to the Black Dragon clan. Not just that, Naoki had taken a liking to this young man. Naoki was good at reading people, as it was an essential skill for the business. He could see that this young man really had a likable personality inside the eccentricity.


    Robert showed the gun and its power to Naoki.


    Naoki was stunned by this new invention. It was like a crossbow but was also like a cannon. It could fire five arrows in succession and be very destructive in the hands of fire magi. But still, he didn¡¯t feel like this was enough for Robert to be able to stand up to the spirit animals in the forest. They were ferocious and some even had armored skins. Naoki was afraid that if Robert stumbles upon one of those animals, it would be really hard to escape the situation.


    Robert kept on pestering Naoki for permission. He wanted to see how the guns worked on spirit animals and wanted to make changes on it.


    This boy! Naoki finally had to give in to his repeated requests after he showed no signs of giving in to Naoki¡¯s order. calling for the head of security of the mansion and getting him to arrange a hunting party to go with Robert to explore the outer parts of the forest.


    After seeing the explosive power of the gun, Naoki was sure that these were enough to kill wild animals in a single shot. But the thickly skinned low leveled spirit animals wouldn¡¯t go down that easily. And seeing the scattershot of shotgun shells and blinding speed of these projectiles, he deduced that the best animals to hunt with these weapons were the Snow eagles. Naoki had hunted snow eagles in his younger years, with a crossbow and knew about them.


    Snow eagles were a type of large eagles that had both power and agility, It can dodge normal arrows and even when hit by them, were not lethally hurt. It was an air element avian which can summon winds to increase its speed in air. The carcass of these eagle had many uses including its feather for high leveled arrows and its sharp claws for many weapons.


    ¡°Is it possible to increase the power of the gun to make it penetrate deeper?¡± Naoki asked. He wanted to make sure Robert will be able to hold up if they came across any of those larger spirit animals.


    Robert shook his head. He had thought about it, having a slug instead of buckshot will increase its penetrating power, as momentum is mass times velocity. A heavier slug will have much more momentum to create a greater impact. The problem was the accuracy, he will have to create barrels with no bends and even train a lot with it to gain accuracy. But these were just for testing purpose, what he really wanted to create was a revolver, pistol, or a rifle that can be loaded like a revolver. His end goal being something like a machine gun.


    He was never too much interested in guns in his past life and all he knew was the outer structure and the name of a few guns. And the current type of guns that he was creating was only usable by fire magi as he had no means of creating the initial spark for the gunpowder to explod. He wished that he had paid more attention towards these in his past life. The only idea he had to create a spark was using flint and steel, he got the idea from a gun called flintlock, he hoped that this idea would work.


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    ¡°I can increase the penetration power but it will reduce the chance of hitting a target¡±, Robert explained the concept of buckshot and slug to Naoki.


    Naoki who was a stranger to these terms quickly grasped the idea behind it. He had been a hunter when he was younger and there were people he knew that shot multiple arrows at once from a single bow. This ¡°gun¡± was the same, it had multiple projectiles that helped it cover a higher target area, but with lesser penetration power.


    ¡°Here, you can have 50 golds in advance, I¡¯ll give the rest, 200 golds after you capture him and make him spill the recipe,¡±


    An old man, completely covering himself with a black cloak, said to a well-built man with a defined face which had a lot of scars.


    ¡°Ha! for you to seek us, what level is his cultivation? I hope he is not some journeyman dark magi¡±


    ¡°of course not, Kimura, He is just a puny apprentice level magi and a low level one at that. And as far as I know, he is a light mage¡±, pausing for a moment the man in the cloak continued,


    ¡°I just don''t want anyone to know I am behind this¡±


    Finishing up the conversation and closing the deal, the cloaked old man walked out of the narrow alley where they were talking. As he came out, the old man swiftly removed the black cloak after confirming there was no one around. This old man was exactly the Alchemist Isau that Robert has chased away from the black metal weaponsmith.


    Isau again anxiously looked around to see if there was anyone following,


    From the moment he got chased away from the black metal weaponsmith he was finding a way to exact his revenge on this young man who got him fired. But his priority has been to find a job first. Now he was an assistant alchemist in the flaming volcano family. He also heard about the new cannon that was the black metal weaponsmith''s creation. But seemingly, no one knew about the mysterious Black Blaze, the senior alchemist saint that has created this weapon. Mysterious my ass, he is definitely that young guy that took my job. But instead of leaking this information to the families, He made a plan to get his revenge and the secret of the magic cannon at the same time.


    He had come personally to the most dangerous area of the city, the cutthroat¡¯s valley to find a mercenary to do his dirty job. Finding a thug called Kimura, he explained the looks of Robert as well as gave the address of Robert¡¯s house. He hired only a low-level thug, not because he underestimated Robert, but he was low on funds. 250 Golds were all from his savings, there was not a silver more to be taken from it.


    Isau had been dreaming about a leisure life, getting 100 golds for every month without doing any work. But it was all shattered by that guy. Isau was not yet sure how he was able to guess the alchemical reaction that he was using. But anyway, the fact that he made Isau lost his job made Black Blaze his mortal enemy.


    Robert was tired from all the reading and he departed from the mansion as soon as the sun began to set. Riding his carriage back, he read ¡°Fauna around Goldfair.¡± It had a lot of contents on the wild animals and some low leveled spirit animals in the forest around the Goldfair city. This book was from Naoki''s private collection. As Naoki knew that Robert had no idea about the dangers of the spirit animals in the forest, he decided to give it to Robert.


    The book was adorned with many animal illustrations, Robert was finally able to see the Rock turtle that had given him earth power. As its name suggested the rock tortoise was a high defense spirit animal that had close to nill attack power. But these animals were excessively hunted for their delicious meat that was considered a delicacy. Robert also read about the Snow eagle that they planned to hunt tomorrow, they had snow white feathers due to air affinity, and thus the name.


    The carriage sped through the city, many stores were beginning to lit up with light orbs. The busy streets never stopped bustling with activity.


    With a cracking sound the back door of Roberts house opened. A group of 5 men, dressed in tattered leather clothes and armed with daggers and swords entered the house. Led by the man called Kimura, they all quickly hid in different places inside the house.

 Chapter 11 : Fate of the attackers

    Getting out of the carriage Robert carried his gun and all the cartridges and walked into the house. He was too lazy to make another trip to the carriage to fetch the cartridges later to reduce the weight.


    From all the times he had to come in late and get lost in darkness inside the house, Robert had made a simple mechanism that turned the light orbs on when he opened the door. But at this moment, this mechanism can be said to have saved his life!


    Robert pushed the door open and the lights went on. Suddenly Robert got this feeling that something was off, instead of rushing in he slowly proceeded, with his gun prepared in his hand.


    ¡°I know you are there, come out!.¡± Robert was not sure if there was actually someone in the house if he had made a mistake, no one is going to see him yelling to the air, so he decided to ask out loud.


    But instead of a stark silence like he expected. A man came out from behind the bookshelf, he wore tattered leather armor and in his hands was a pitch black dagger.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t expect you to find me! ¡± He said with a slight smile,


    ¡°But you made the mistake of coming in, you should have run!¡±


    Suddenly the door behind him closed shut, with a loud noise. Robert understood that he had walked into an ambush. He was being surrounded by thugs. Without wasting a moment he ran towards the nearest wall, he got trapped here anyway, why would he allow himself to be surrounded. This way there was only half the amount of space to observe and he could attack without the fear of being stabbed in the back.


    ¡°Who are you? I don¡¯t want any trouble¡±, Robert didn¡¯t want to fight if possible.


    It was not that he lacked confidence in the ability of his gun, but he was concerned more about the life of these five men. They were living breathing human beings. There might be a family depending on each of them, they might have children who were waiting for their dads back home!


    He saw three men slowly surround him, clad in leather suits and weapons were drawn, then two more joined them.


    And the man who spoke earlier spoke again.


    ¡°We do not have anything against you, friend, but we have to do this to survive. You have the option of cooperating with us, give us the alchemical recipe for the cannon and we''ll make sure you have a painless death or else.¡± He paused after saying that much.


    ¡°What if I pay you the money the other side has offered to kill me to not kill me?¡±


    Being from the peaceful times in earth, Robert had grown to be a true pacifist. He would choose the method of nonviolence if he has the chance to. Also, Robert now had a great amount of wealth and wouldn¡¯t mind spending some of it to ward off these people. Tomorrow he could ask Sophy for some guards for his home and everything would be alright.


    ¡°That-¡±, looking at the other thugs, he waited a moment before answering.


    ¡°Although I would like to do that if I go against the one who gave me the contract, what would be of my reputation on the streets? It''s hard to get rid of a bad name in this business, and my family is dependant on me¡±


    Robert was about to say something when a man with mustache said


    ¡°What are we waiting for, leader? let''s just capture him and get this done with¡±


    Saying this he walked towards Robert.


    ¡°STOP. I don¡¯t want to hurt you!¡±,Robert yelled at the man closing in on him.


    ¡°Haha, you don''t want to hurt me? what kind of joke is this?¡±


    Roberts words only fueled his drive to take Robert sooner, this idiot is too full of himself!


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    There was no other way, Robert finally decided to use the gun. The gun, looking like 5 tubes attached together had never been seen before and thus had no intimidation factor. He had to fire to show its power to these fools.


    Boom! The loud noise of explosion reverberated in the small room.


    Robert fired a shot to the front of the place the man was advancing, there were half a dozen of craters in front of him.


    The man who was took on surprise looked at Robert, stunned. but instead of retreating, he decided to rush forward, his dagger covered in frost, ready to pierce into Robert¡¯s flesh. He thought the weapon in Robert¡¯s hand must be similar to a crossbow and there was no way he could fire in succession.


    Seeing this reaction Robert had no time to think. It was a kill or be killed situation. He aimed the gun at the incoming thug, but he just couldn¡¯t kill a man. Finally, he aimed at the man¡¯s legs and the gun spat fire.


    Blood splattered and flesh was pierced, one moment the man was running, the next he fell on the floor with a loud cry.


    All the others were still in shock from the 1st gunshot and its aftermath on the floor that they couldn¡¯t stop the man from advancing. Robert had a surge of emotions rising up from his heart.


    This man''s legs are probably crippled. I have just crippled a man for life. Although it was in self-defense in a kill or be killed situation, he couldn¡¯t just accept that. He from earth would have never been able to do it. The society condemned those who committed murders to a level even lower than animals.


    He mustered up the courage and aimed the gun at the head of the man called Kimura. It was nothing but a bluff, there was no way he would kill someone. But after seeing what had happened to the other man, they were not even going to fight.


    What they have gone against today was truly devil itself! or how would he be able to injure their friend without even using magic or drawing a sword? Even if it was a bow, it still required pulling the string. Aiming at his leg, his leg was now in ruins, what would happen if he were to aim it at his head?


    They were all trembling with fear,


    ¡°Who sent you?¡±, Robert asked.


    ¡°Is-Isau, it was the master alchemist Isau¡±, the man called Kimura said still in fear.


    ¡°Please forgive us. please spare our life¡±, the men begged in unison.


    "I dont want to get in trouble for manslaughter, yet." He hadn¡¯t forgotten that they were just trying to kill him, but he had planned to hand them over to the city guards. He didn''t want to kill anyone with his hands, he didn''t have the heart to kill someone himself.


    He led the men out, still at gunpoint, and onwards to the city guards¡¯ house that was nearby. These city guards were both the police and military here. But the presence of these guards in no way affected the operation of petty thieves or murderers.Robert decided to go back to Sophy¡¯s mansion. At least he will be able to be safe there. After going through the traumatizing incident, he didn¡¯t want to risk his life again.


    That guy Isau is crazy. I just got him fired and he¡¯s trying to murder me! If this was the norm on earth, all the CEOs of companies would have died a thousand times over. Still, Robert was happy that he could thwart this dangerous situation. Luck also played a major factor in this though, If they had been here a few days earlier, he would surely have been dead by now.


    After Robert walked away from the guards'' house, an orb of red light shot into the darkness of the night sky and exploded into skull-shaped fireworks.

 Chapter 12 : Kill or be killed!

    It was business as usual in the Cutthroat¡¯s valley, mercenaries roaming around looking for works, thieves trying to sell the stuff they stole. But the sudden appearance of a red skull in the sky has changed everything.


    It was the call for the backup of the Snake Skull, they were one of the major powers backing the thugs in Cutthroats valley. They usually stood behind the scenes collecting a percentage of money from the thugs they back. Only moving their forces if there were some large forces trying to interfere with their jobs. And this rule had a reciprocity as the thugs didn¡¯t take on any works relating to the large families.


    They had the money and the power to fight head to head with the large families of the city. And thus the families controlling the city would ignore the actions of most thugs. This was the same reason the city guards were dormant in the civil sector.


    Even if they wouldn¡¯t catch thugs or robbers. If some of them are caught by civilians and brought to them, how can they say no? This was the lone reason the guards arrested the thugs brought by Robert. But the spy inside the guardhouse had only one order if any of the Snake Skull¡¯s allied people were arrested by the guards, use the signaling orb.


    The guards have had the bitter experience of a 100 thugs raiding the guard house before, thus they avoided arresting anyone who had the Snake Skull¡¯s signature ring. No one dared to forge this signature ring as that will invite the wrath of the whole group of thugs.


    As soon as Robert was far away, the guards released the thugs and explained their side. But it was still too late, the signal had already been given and a group of 20 had set out to the guard''s house.


    When they arrived and understood the situation, instead of attacking the guard house they decided to finish the work they had begun. No one, No one should dare to go against the Snake Skull!


    If Robert had injured or even killed off the attackers, the Snake Skull wouldn¡¯t have move. As it was part of the occupational hazard. But capturing them and handing them over to the guards was an attack on the unspoken treaty between the big families and Snake Skull. Thus it required the repairing of their image and reputation.


    And the head of the newly arrived group of thugs was intrigued by the information about the secret alchemy recipe of cannon that Robert had. He also wanted to see what the explosive weapon this alchemist possessed was. He was not as dumb as the 1st wave of attackers to not know what it meant. And if one equipped a group of bandits with these weapons, the might cannot be defeated even by an army of shielded knights.


    Robert had a dilemma in his mind.He has made it easier for people to kill by giving them cannons, and now he was preaching nonviolence. Although he was not killing anyone, the might of these cannons was an indirect way of him killing all those soldiers in the battlefield!


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.He thought about it, how many defense company CEOs might have killed a person with their own hand? It would only be a few. But they have facilitated mass murders on the battlefield. Can they preach about nonviolence? Should he have killed those men right then and there?


    Robert was loading up his essential stuff into the carriage. He was not in a hurry, the guys that tried to kill him was in guards house anyway. As he was about to go to fetch the last load of things, he heard the noise of horses galloping, and it was getting closer and closer.


    Robert saw the shadow of a man¡¯s silhouette, atop a horse wearing tattered leather armor, just like the men who tried to kill him.


    Not good! Robert suddenly understood the precarious situation that he was in. But he still didn¡¯t understand how these guys were able to get backup this quickly. This man must be a scout, and if I am not wrong, the horse sounds must be all their people.


    After I showed them mercy they are still planning to kill me, I should seriously reconsider my belief systems. If they are going to slaughter me, why would I need to show them mercy? If they are mass murdering people, and I kill them wouldn¡¯t it be a service to the society? But he had no time to think now.


    Shit.


    He had to do something. If they capture me, death is the least of my worries.


    He thought of his options, his gun had 5 rounds, and three more cartridges left. A total of 20 rounds, and even if he had 20 rounds, it was not like the enemies will stand there all the time he is shooting. So facing them straight was not an option. He looked around to see what he had with him. There was a barrel of gunpowder that was the waste from all the preparation, it was not the best quality, but more than enough for what he was planning.


    He rushed into the house and got a small iron cauldron. he used his flame and poked a hole in it, then after cooling it by water, filled it with gunpowder and sealed the lid to its place using a hammer. He inserted a quick fuse into the hole he had made. And prayed that this ¡°bomb¡± of his to work. He took another one of his utensils and made it into a bomb as well.


    By the time had rushed into the roof, there were almost 25 men walking towards the house. The scout had already reported the movements and they were preparing to trap him in the house.


    The house Robert lived in was surrounded by large buildings and the only way in was a small road. That was the reason they decided to leave the horses behind, or the way would have been too chaotic from all the horses entering.


    The men surrounded the home, four of the men who had attempted to kill him was there too. Many of the men wore leather armor, some new, some tattered from fights. They had weapons ranging from daggers to spears. Gladly, he saw no bows or crossbows. Still what he was about to try was so dangerous.


    He had no choice left but to fight. It¡¯s either kill or be killed!


    He could hear his heart beating. He took a deep breath and cleared his mind.

 Chapter 13 : 1 vs 25

    10 or more men stood in front of Robert''s house, a few have already entered the house. Probably sent by the leader of the men to be scapegoats to Robert¡¯s weapon and provide the others a chance to rush in. There were also a number of men currently walking through the road to join the crowd.


    Robert was in the windows that were in the top of the house and had a clear view of the men. He looked for anyone resembling a leader, if he takes out the leader first, there was a higher chance for his escape. But sadly no one stood out from the crowd as a leader.


    The Guy that led these thugs already knew that Robert possessed a ranged weapon and thus hid behind his troops. He had made everyone stand close so that he was indistinguishable from the rest, but this made Robert merrier.


    ¡°Stand even closer!¡± He wanted to shout to those guys.


    Suddenly hearing the sound of men climbing the stairs to the top of the house, Robert decided to not wait anymore.


    He lit the fuse of a bomb in his hand and opened the window and threw it into the middle of the crowd. A small commotion formed but seeing that it was just a cauldron, they laughed it off. Has that guy used up all his weapons that he is now throwing kitchen utensils at us?


    A second passed, and the fire slowly burned through the fuse and entered the cauldron, and the next moment


    ¡°BOOM¡±


    A deafening explosion accompanied by a flash of fire occurred and a large cloud of smoke rose. The men who were near it was blown to smithereens, and even many of those who stood away were pierced by the shards of the exploding cauldron.


    Robert had ducked down and covered his ears for the explosion. Once he heard the explosion, he climbed out of the window and caught the bottom of the window and jumped down, hoping to not break his leg.


    Landing on the ground, he ran through the center of destruction towards the narrow road that leads to the main street. He didn¡¯t even look back to see how much damage he has done. The men in the road near the house were stunned by the explosion for a few seconds and thus didn¡¯t even see the man who was running towards them.


    While running, Robert lit the second bomb and threw it into the carriage he had loaded with his stuff. There was no way he would leave behind his centrifuge equipment or the tubes of magic cells to be on their hands.


    Robert didn¡¯t stop and rushed through these men, but was met with a few men who got out of the stun and drawn their weapons to deal with the guy who was running towards them. He had dressed in a very different attire than the rest of the men and thus they were sure he was not one of them. They drew their weapons and rushed towards Robert, there were about six of them.


    Robert aimed his gun at the center mass, from one of the five cold black metal barrels of the gun, a spray of metal came out along with a cloud of smoke. And even before he could think about dodging, the man felt his chest being hit with a sled hammer and the pain of a thousand needles came about. He fell on his back, dead.


    Another explosion rang out behind his, but it didn¡¯t budge Robert who was clearly prepared for it. Robert didn¡¯t stop and aimed the gun at the next man, and the same scene happened again. He shot down 4 men and missed one, but Robert had no time to think, a man wielding a spear of flames was closing in on him.


    Having no time to reload, concentrating his earth elemental power on his right leg, he kicked down. A boulder, the size of a fist shot out from the ground to his hand, his hand was already ablaze with his fire magic. Robert poured in energy into the flame and heated up the rock for a second before sending it flying into the man who was rushing towards him.


    The red-hot rock hit the chest of the man and he was thrown back. The other men were 20 feet away, Robert reloaded his gun and started to run again. Rushing through the corpses of the men he had shot down, he gained some distance before again aiming a man with a short sword and shooting him down. The men behind who saw this carnage started running away from Robert.


    Robert was already out of breath from his running that when he saw this he became happy and ran towards the street.


    Suddenly, a fireball landed right where he was standing and exploded, Robert escaped from a direct impact in a hairline difference. His left leg was hit and was bleeding.


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    ¡°Shit !¡±


    Robert realized that there was a powerful mage among the men whom he had missed. Robert was in direct line of fire from that mage. He stopped running and turned around to see someone amassing flames in his arms to cast another fireball. Robert aimed at the man and fired his gun, but that man was standing far away and thus he missed the shot. But it was enough to stop the magicians cast, Robert limped, reaching the street successfully.


    The whole thing took place within a minute, a party of 20 thugs was annihilated by Robert.


    The explosions have woken up the whole neighborhood and many curious heads were staring out of their windows. The streets that were bustling with activity had fallen into a stark silence, curious of the source of explosions. Then the streets again became loud this time they were enquiring others about what had happened.


    Robert was a lone man, injured, walking against the crowds that were all looking towards the source of the explosions. He somehow got into the nearby horse stable and threw a bag of gold coins to the man.


    ¡°Give me your fastest horse! Now!¡±


    The man hesitated for a moment seeing the bleeding man in front of him, but seeing the bag of gold coins, nodded quickly, ran into the stable and brought out a jet black horse with a muscular build. Robert took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet to stop bleeding.


    Robert got onto its back and hurried into Sophy¡¯s mansion. He had already lost a lot of blood and was almost fainting when he reached the front gate. The soldiers there knew Robert and helped him into the mansion.


    ¡°Wha-what happen? How did you get hurt?¡± Sophy was worried seeing Robert being helped into the mansion by the guards, his legs were still bleeding.


    What kind of trouble have this guy gotten into? Hopefully, he didn¡¯t go around asking for blood like a vampire outside the mansion. Sophy didn¡¯t think that he was that dumb.


    ¡°Long story, call a doctor for me will you?¡± even Robert was unsure of many things about what had happened and wanted to take a moment to recollect everything.


    He asked for a chair and used it to place his leg when lying on the blood. He wanted to stop further bleeding by putting legs higher than the level of the heart.


    A guard rushed off to call a doctor, and manager Naoki arrived when Robert was narrating what happened. After hearing the story, Naoki stroked his chin pondering over what Robert had told. He could have offended someone and thus had the normal thugs sent after him. But why did Snake skulls get involved in this? But when Robert described how he handed over the thugs to the guards, Naoki understood what had happened.


    This kid. He Almost made the whole city a battleground. He did two idiotic things. Firstly why the hell would he leave anyone who had came to kill him alive? Then he even handed them over to the city guards, which made the snake skulls make a move.


    After listening to Robert narrating the whole thing, Sophy¡¯s mouth was open from disbelief.


    He just fought with 20 thugs and escaped with just an injured leg!


    Sophy was glad that he was alright. He had helped her get rid of that scamming alchemist who was leeching off her money. 100 golds were nothing for Sophy, but she didn¡¯t like getting scammed.


    Breaking through the barricade of 20 armed mercenaries does not only depend on brute force, it also requires high intelligence. Especially when the 20 men were way above his cultivation. This, Sophy was sure of. She had the strategy knowledge as she was the heir of the clan, and the strategy Robert had used just now was the best he could have used in that situation. And didn¡¯t he mention that he made up that ¡°bomb¡± on the spot? What kind of calmness does it require to create something when he was surrounded by enemies, and turn around the situation.


    Although he was astonished, Naoki didn¡¯t show it on his face. This guy didn¡¯t just fight with 20 random thugs, but with 20 of Snake skull men. And he broke through their barricade.


    Naoki wanted him to explain what the ¡°Bomb¡± that he used was and so on, but decided to do it later. They anxiously waited for the doctor while Naoki explained whom these Snake skulls were and their power in the Goldfair city.


    Robert broke a cold sweat when he listened to all that.


    ¡°What kind of trouble have I brought upon myself¡±, he asked himself.

 Chapter 14 : Lord Yuuma

    ¡°16 dead ?!¡±, Yugimi couldn¡¯t believe what he has heard.


    ¡°20 of you couldn¡¯t catch a single boy? And what is this weapon that you are telling me.¡±


    Yugimi was furious, it was not because he lost 16 men, he didn¡¯t care for their lives. They were all just pawns. But he was angry that they sacrificed this many person and were unable to do any harm to that boy.


    ¡°Get me that man who contracted us to kill him first. He must know something about this guy,¡± Yugimi shouted to the men who were shivering in fright in front of him. These were the survivors from the group of men that had attacked Rober, only one man remained from the original five thugs who tried to kill Robert.


    After bowing their head in respect, they went to find Isau. They were so angry that they could kill Isau if they got their hands on him now.


    After the men walked out of the room, Yugimi walked into the fireplace and poured his energy into a crystal above it. And walked straight through the fire into a dark room, lit by a candle. The bald old man that had killed Riley was sitting there in meditation, near him there was a crystal bowl full of dark red blood. His right hand was forcing a sphere of blood into his vein in his left arm, which had been cut and bleeding.


    Yugimi waited there not daring to disturb the bald man. After a minute, the man started shivering and skin pale white skin flushed, after suffering for a while, he stood up and gazing through the window into the stars of the sky.


    ¡°I can only take one more dose of this cloud wyvern blood before my vitality runs out,¡± he said in melancholy.


    ¡°I am not even sure if gaining affinity of another element was really worth losing my already diminishing vitality¡±, The old man was certainly contemplating his past choices when he said it.


    ¡°Gaining the bloodline of a spirit animal, only milord could accomplish it. All others we have tested on have surrendered to the poison without any resistance.¡±, Yugimi praised the old man.


    He had seen the poison¡¯s effect on normal people, they would get a high fever and die due to it. There was no way a normal human being be able to withstand the power of a spirit animals bloodline.


    ¡°What about the test subjects that I requested?¡±, The old man asked.


    ¡°I am arranging for them milord, you will have them by tomorrow. This time you will certainly succeed.¡±


    ¡°I hope I do, this body does not have any more vitality left. Unless I can absorb life force from someone successfully, only demise awaits me¡±


    The man was thinking about that one last barrier that had been stopping him from absorbing the vitality of his test subjects. The phase where he had to infuse his soul into their body and do something. He found this method of absorbing vitality from a rune that he got his hands on.The runes were partially obscure and thus the only way for him to continue was to experiment constantly.


    ¡°Master, the payment for the last men that I delivered?¡±, Yugimi asked with a shameful voice.


    ¡°Here,¡± the man flicked his hands and a single spirit stone, shining with a blue core flew to Yugimi.


    This guy is asking for a payment for delivering 10 men. What a pitiful state this Lord Yuuma has fallen into. I can¡¯t step on North Eastly Empire as the whole army is chasing after me. I have to be careful on even this small country of Lorvale.


    I think killing a million people for tests were a bit too much. But what can I do, having used up my vitality to infuse the bloodline of the Cloud Wyvern, I had no choice but to use this way to increase my vitality. And they were people that I owned. It was not like I abducted people from other nobles¡¯ fiefs. It was the piece of land that I owned. The people I owned. And I was only an inch away from success if only I had a thousand more people to test on!


    Yuumi let out a sigh. It seems that I will have to wait until my followers arrive.


    What he didn¡¯t know was that this so-called poison in the spirit animal blood was the antigens in the blood that human body fought against when entered into its bloodstream, and that a young man called Robert has already injected himself with spirit animal blood and didn¡¯t even have a side effect.


    The doctor that came to heal Robert was annoyed by the number of questions that were asked by the young man whom he was supposed to treat. Robert was asking away many questions that he had about the human body, trying to understand the source of magic power.


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    He had to increase his power level as soon as possible, as he was already against powerful foes, and he was not sure how much power his future enemies would have.


    He knew that magic cells carried the magic energy in the body, but he was still unsure of the source of the energy.


    The doctor explained that heart was the source of magic and how meditation can help him control the energy inside the heart to compact it to increase someone''s level.


    When he asked about the structure of the heart, Sophy gave him a weird look. There he goes with his eccentric character. This guy is an alchemist and he is also trying to be a doctor now? With his skill in alchemy and weaponsmithing alone, he could have a prominent position in the society. It was not that Sophy was complaining, he was on her side anyway. The higher his skills are, she would benefit better from it.


    Sophy was not just trying to get benefit from him, she had a feeling that this young man was going to be someone important. Someone in a much higher position than her in the future and wanted to be someone who stands beside him at that time.


    The doctor also paused for a moment after hearing this question. But then explained it to him. The human heart in this world had 5 chambers, Two atria, two ventricles and the center Mysticle. Robert knew that in earth Heart had only 4 chambers, so he asked curiously about this Mysticle. The doctor explained it as a small pearl in between the four chambers, it contained all the magic energy of someone and thus was responsible for providing it to the blood.


    This doctor had a bit of hesitation when Robert asked him about the mysticle and all, there were many who sought this knowledge for ill intends. But in Robert, the doctor only saw curiosity. It was like this man was a born scholar and had a curiosity for everything. And thus the doctor helped him quench his thirst for knowledge as much as possible.


    Doctor grew a vine in his wound and its leaves covered the wound, It filled the room with a medicinal aroma. Robert was ordered to rest for three days before moving again. He decided to use this time to sense the Mysticle and how it contained energy. He could already feel the energy flowing through his blood streams and knew its concentration was most high in his heart.


    After a few hours, he was able to feel his heart completely. He could clearly sense that there were five energy masses. The center one was like a lighthouse in the middle of an ocean, but the four others were like an ocean lit by thunderclouds. He could feel them contracting and expanding.


    Concentrating on the Mysticle, he could feel that it was filled with energy. He tried to control the flow of energy and could easily do it. He felt like he can empty the whole energy into bloodstream if he wanted to.


    This gave Robert the total understanding of how magic works. The Mysticle absorbed the energy from the universe and stored it. The magic cells in the blood chose the element and carried the energy to various parts of the body.


    If he wanted to increase the magic power he has to increase the amount of energy inside Mysticle, and for using this magic efficiently he either needed more magic blood cells or blood cells that could carry more magic.


    So he has to take a two-prong approach to his cultivation. He needed to find a way to increase the energy of Mysticle as well as get his hands on all elemental blood cells. He had read that there existed dragons and wyverns that could topple cities with their magic. If only he could get his hands on their blood.


    For increasing the energy in Mysticle, he already had a plan when he found that he could control the energy inside it. He could convert the energy into matter! Just the way they used to do it in the particle accelerators. He theorized that if he could create mass, then it will form a cloud of matter which can be further transformed into a dense energy source by following the life cycle of stars and other celestial objects.


    He named it "Celestial cultivation." It was the way the universe was formed, and if everything goes right, he can trample the heavens with this cultivation method.

 Chapter 15 : Yuumas army

    A group of hundred was traversing through the territory of Lorvale. If their movement was plotted on a map, it would leave a blood trail in it as they were not just traveling but slaughtering their way through the land. But they were not an army that was conquering the land, neither were they a group of bandits pillaging through villages.


    They were a group of about hundred bald men, their bones were protruding from their skins as if they were skeletons covered with just a thin layer of skin. They left behind corpses that looked like they were pierced with a thousand needles. They were riding on black panthers, muscular in build and different ones had different colored stripes. Those were medium leveled spirit animals, Elemental panthers.


    Elemental panthers were known for their speed as well as endurance and were one of the favorite animals of explorers in this continent. There were 5 subspecies of these panthers, each having an element as its base. Although their combat abilities were not as good as their speed and endurance, their power cannot be ignored.


    A man who was riding in the front just behind the first row of men suddenly hurried his mount and reached the front row. He asked one of the men who was in the front row


    ¡°Sir, when will we reach our destination?¡±


    ¡°Soon. we are nearing our master¡±, the man in the front replied.


    ¡°Master¡¯s teleportation scroll had taken him to a place thousand kilometers in front of us¡±, another man added.


    The man who rode his panther to the front row nodded and returned to his original position.


    They continued riding their elemental panthers through a meadow of emerald grass, towards Goldfair city.


    Robert was watching Sophy perform magic from his room. It was a bright morning and she was in the middle of the garden, casting spells after spells of earth magic. She lifted earth, terraforming the garden, she levitated boulders so big that they were the size of her and moved them out of the way.


    But what made Robert really curious was the little wand that she waved to summon a golem made of earth. It did many tricks as Sophy flicked and waved that little wand around like she was conducting a music orchestra. It slammed into boulders, smashing them, it lifted up boulders and threw them.


    Robert really wanted to know what that wand really was, as it somehow allowed the magic that Sophy summoned to have a mind of its own and also she was able to do ranged magic. Robert had thought till now that ranged magic was not controllable, once they were cast, they were out of control. But seeing Sophy do this, he wanted to learn how to use a wand.


    Although the library in this mansion was pretty good, they didn¡¯t contain any high leveled books.And most books were of local authors and magicians.


    ¡°There is so many things in this world that you can¡¯t simply understand by reading a bunch of books,¡± Robert muttered to himself, determined to pester Sophy when she got back in.


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    For now, he decided to experiment with his own cultivation. Meditating, he entered the trance state where he could control the mysticle and its energy. He wanted to emulate the particle accelerators and convert the energy into particles. He willed and rotated the energy inside his mysticle, but was soon met with a problem. If he wanted to use the energy inside his mysticle to generate particles, he will have to collide them together at near light speed. And he was sure that his current energy level was nowhere near reaching that amount.


    He decided to do one thing make the top energy of mysticle rotate in one direction and the bottom portion in another. After achieving high enough angular velocity, he could collide them together to get double the velocity!


    This looked easy on paper, but putting it into practice was another thing. Achieving two different spins for energy inside the mysticle was not a small feat. It can only be achieved by having total control over the energy.


    He made a small tornado of spinning energy particles in his lower mysticle, then tried to do the opposite in the upper region, it spun the way he wanted to, but the problem was that after he achieved the spin, the first tornado he had created had already disappeared.


    He tried to control the top and bottom portion alternatively and increase the spin, and after a lot of trying, he was able to achieve to opposite spinning slow tornados in his mysticle. He was so happy about it, and he decided to try and collide the energy. He willed and moved the two tornados into the center region and suddenly, it dissipated.


    He let out a cold laugh. How can it be so simple, the energy he needed to pour into it was astronomical in order for it to work. He tried again, and again. Each time he spun the tornadoes little faster, but the results were the same as before.


    After trying for so many times, he had exhausted all his energy that he fell asleep due to tiredness the moment he finished his last round of experiments.


    Three horse-drawn carriages slowly entered the Cutthroat¡¯s valley. They headed to the small castle that was the headquarters of Snake skull. After reaching the castle, A few men who were tied and mouth plastered was carried in through a secret passway into the chamber of the Snake skulls leader, Yugimi. The men who carried the captives were all dressed in black and had a mask covering their face. It was the face of a demon with its eyebrows replaced by snakes.


    The masked men delivered the captives, 20 of them to Yugimi and disappeared after bowing to him.


    Lord Yuuma appeared from the fireplace, he walked towards the captives and slowly caressed each of their heads, nodding slightly in satisfaction. The captives were then transferred to the secret room.


    City guards received many complaints of men disappearing that night. The patrol in the city was increased as an effect. But there was no trace of these disappeared men. It was like they had just disappeared from the face of the planet.

 Chapter 16 : Magic wand

    ¡°So the wand is for amplifying as well as controlling magic at a distance? ¡± Robert asked.


    ¡°Yes, the wand helps to increase your elemental affinity and gives you control over magic over a distance,¡± Sophy replied. She had gotten used to the queries of Robert. He was like a kid seeing new things but he was more interested in knowing how everything works rather than what it is.


    ¡°How much does it cost?¡± Robert was curious about the price as he wanted to buy one and experiment with it.But the reply of sophy instantly killed his hope.


    ¡°money can¡¯t buy it!¡±


    Sophy went ahead and explained what she meant in detail. The wands were made of the core wood of trees that have at least reached 500 years of age, and the heartstrings of at least medium level spirit animals. Both were rare and only large families or guilds were able to get their hands on these. The range was based on the power level of the spirit animal while the amplification property was based on the age of the tree core used.


    These trees as they grow old develop the core, just like the mysticle in humans, in order to absorb the energy of the world. And this was a reversible process, if you put a concentrated energy into this core, it will uncompress the energy to amplify its prowess. This was a blessing to light mages, as it allowed them to enter into combat.


    The heart string of spirit animals was the appendage next to their mysticle and made it possible for them to use ranged magic. Humans who were a species lacking this organ couldn¡¯t control their magic at a distance.


    Then Sophy described her wand, she had a slight smile on her face when she explained to him how her father bought it for her on her 20th birthday.


    It was made of a 1000 year rock barked oak¡¯s core and heartstring of a rock golem. She went ahead and told in detail about how her father fought with many other clan leaders in the auction house in a bidding war for acquiring this wand for her.


    Robert understood the amount of love this girl had to her father, she was truly filial. It must have been hard on her for accepting the current state of her father.


    ¡°How much is that in gold?¡± Robert didn¡¯t understand what she meant by blue spirit stone. He had only seen white spirit stones which cost 10 gold.


    ¡°You don¡¯t even know this?¡±, Sophy asked jokingly.


    He truly is a country bumpkin. But an intelligent, smart, curious, studious country bumpkin. She said to herself and smiled.


    Then she explained the conversion rate. One white spirit stone was 10 golds, one blue spirit stone was 1000 white spirit stones, and a purple spirit stone fetched 1000 blue spirit stones. There existed legends of black spirit stones, but even her father hasn¡¯t seen one of it!


    Robert wanted to try this wand out, but he didn¡¯t want the world to know that he could also do earth magic. As he was not yet powerful, it would only bring disaster upon him.


    He wanted to get a wand, but was not sure where he will get the materials from. Buying one was out of the question. Even after his big profits from the cannons, he couldn¡¯t afford to get even one blue spirit stone, let alone 100.


    The work of factory was going smoothly, the molds for cannons were prepared, and raw black iron was being brought over. A mill for powdering the raw materials of gunpowder was built, also a mixing mechanism was made. The only problem was acquiring raw materials without tipping off the recipe to spies.


    Sophy said that she can take care of secrecy and acquire raw materials if he would tell her the formulae. Robert finally decided to give it up, it''s her that does all the work anyways.


    Sophy wouldn¡¯t have pressed him for the information if he had enough resources to secretly acquire all the materials required. She was not someone who pried into others secrets. But he truly was incapable of doing the logistics operations and this was the only way the production could go on the full scale.


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    Robert spent the next two days in bed, trying to increase the velocity of energy tornadoes within his mysticle. Although he has substantially increased the angular velocity, it was still nowhere near the required speed.


    He spent the rest of the day studying Sophy¡¯s magic wand. Although she was reluctant to give it to him at first, after he offered her the recipe for gunpowder, she had no choice but to give it to him to study. But she stayed with him to see what he was intending to do.


    Taking the thin but heavy wand in his hand, he slowly studied it. The brown wood had many carvings of runes in it, A black-brown string with the thickness of a few hair strands was wound upon the screw like a channel that was carved on the wood, it was then covered with transparent crystal.


    As soon as he took the wand in his hand, he could feel that the earth element within him was throbbing for something. The wand didn¡¯t feel like a piece of stick, but as a part of his body, he had the feeling that it was his own appendage. After gazing upon it for a few more minutes, he smiled and returned it to Sophy.


    But from Sophy¡¯s perspective, Robert was like a kid looking at his new toy in joy. And she was glad when he finally returned it to her, from his expression she thought that she would have to take it away from him forcefully.


    In the last two days, 40 more men had disappeared from the city. The guards were alarmed by this, having a person or two disappearing was considered normal, but twenty men each for three days was a lot, the issue had even been raised to the two large families. And they had ordered their people to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.


    ¡°get me 500 men for tests Yugimi, I am expecting some guests,¡± Lord Yuuma said in high spirits.


    500 men? What the hell is this guy thinking? Getting 20 a day without anyone noticing was already hard, now he wants 500?


    ¡°I am sorry milord, the city guards and two families are on high alert. I doubt it will be possible to even get 10 people today, at least not secretly,¡± Yugimi said in a sad tone.


    ¡°If they are onto us, why should you worry about being secretive, just drag all those men in, I¡¯ll pay double. And don¡¯t worry, the two families won¡¯t dare to touch you, I¡¯ll deal with them¡± Yuuma said in an emotionless voice.


    Yugimi considered it for a moment, he had already made one years income of snake skull in a month working with this man. If he can keep it up for one more month, he will have enough capital to go to some large city and start again there. At that time who cares about what he had done here. And he trusted this man Yuuma, he had paid good money for the men till now, although he was a little weird, he kept his words till now. And this was a one time opportunity.


    ¡°I¡¯ll make the arrangements¡±, Yugimi withdrew from the secret chamber after telling this.


    He didn¡¯t summon the masked men but instead ordered the normal thugs to abduct some men, for each he had offered 100 golds. This was a really easy money, they could get ten times their normal pay by doing half the work. And there were no restrictions, they could take anyone to get the payment!


    It was just another normal day in the city, streets filled with bustling crowd bargaining to get the best price. But inside the city hall, it was chaos. The news that Snake skull issued a buying order for men had shaken up everyone. Goldfair city had no slaves or slave market, thanks to the effort of the ancestors of these two families. But now it seemed like this madman Yugimi is going head-on against the two families.


    They had no doubts that they will be able to win in such a war, but why is Yugimi doing this? And why now? There was also the question of how he was able to pay such an exorbitant price for these men. Even in slave markets, the price was only 10 golds for a slave. He most certainly has a hidden card.


    The big families were in a dilemma on what to do.

 Chapter 17 : Storm Clouds Are Gathering

    A man in his forties was pushing his cart of vegetables, through a residence street, it was his normal routine, he would go door to door selling these vegetables. He pushed the cart and felt like someone was following him. Turning back, he saw nothing. But when he turned back again to continue his job, what awaited him was a blitz attack with a wooden log. All he saw was the flash of a wooden log, then everything went dark.


    Scenes like this played out throughout the city. Although the guards were on high alert that day, it couldn¡¯t stop the thugs from kidnapping people. Fights between these thugs erupted in many parts of the city. The two families had mobilized their private armies to help the guards, but it was of not much use. Some thugs did their job stealthily without even making a noise while others did it as loud and brutal as they could.


    Many thugs and guards died in the fights that had erupted. The number of captives inside the Snake skull castle increased, many thugs brought a single man, but there were some who had captured 10 or more!


    Yugimi had already converted the blue spirit stone into gold for paying these thugs and amassing weapons. He had already recalled all those were under the Snake skull banner to be in Cutthroat¡¯s valley as he expected a movement from the big families. He also bought support from the other smaller criminal organizations to help him in this process. Right now no one would dare to take a step inside the Cutthroats valley!


    Lord Yuuma had told him that some of his followers were coming, and each of them had cultivation no less than of an expert. Yugimi was delighted to know this news, there were only twenty or thirty experts in total in the Goldfair city. If he had the help of just twenty experts, he could make this city under his control.


    Upon asking Yuuma about this, he agreed after thinking for a second. His reasoning was that if there is a city under his control, he could get as many test subjects as he needs and also it will give him a place to house all his future operations.


    Yugimi went on to make a plan to capture the city by attacking the two families and the city hall. His plan was to have a head-on attack with the experts of Yuuma leading a pack of thugs. But Yuuma shook his head. He wanted to assassinate all the top people of the big families, taking control of them all. That way they would get maximum returns from minimum work.


    Yugimi had already stopped thinking about the incident with Robert as after they got their hands on Isau. He had told them about Black Dragon clan¡¯s involvement in it. Yugimi was certainly not ready to go up against one of the top clans of the country, at least not now.


    He had already prepared a list of people whom he mustn¡¯t touch while he was taking the city under control.


    The Cutthroat¡¯s valley was bustling with activity, carriages filled with weapons and dragging spirit cannons rode into the street. The castle of snake skulls had already rolled out all their spirit cannons to defend the castle.


    Sophy stepped into the weapons store, with Robert walking behind her. She was summoned here because something strange had happened. All of their spirit cannons were sold out just now. They were all bought by different people, some by the big families and some were shady people. Their sales have been soaring through the roof for the last week. Something fishy was definitely going on. Many people even enquired about the new type of cannons that were a privileged knowledge of a few nobles.


    Robert was feeling so restless sitting around in the mansion that he persuaded Sophy to take him with her here.


    ¡°Don¡¯t sell any more cannons,¡± Sophy ordered to the group of employees. Old man Naoki was right, something is certainly wrong.


    They nodded and went back to works. Sophy took this decision only because the store was a weapon store. Any other commodities, if they are getting higher sales it will make the owner joyful. But weapon sales increasing was the sign of troubled times. And people were even hoarding magic cannons, the trouble this time was not something small.


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    She wished that it was actually nothing. Usually, weapon dealers wouldn¡¯t pray for war to stop, but although she was a weapons dealer. Although she was brought up to be a strong leader, somewhere deep in her heart, she wanted peace. She wanted a world where everyone can coexist without any trouble.


    Sophy stayed in the store while Robert went back to the firing range. The building that was behind it was a warehouse and Sophy bought it to convert it into a new factory.


    Robert walked into the building, there were five guards guarding the door. Sophy had handpicked these people to make sure that they were all trustworthy. Walking through the door, He entered into a large hall, lit by light orbs with pure white radiance.


    There was a huge cauldron suspended by chains. It was filled with red-hot molten black metal, Then it was poured into a mold made of clay. Robert didn¡¯t know much about these processes and thankfully he didn¡¯t have to. The spirit cannons that were being used was good enough for copying the structure of the cannon from. The only difference was that these were made of black iron instead of the bronze.


    The building was divided into two parts, separated by a wall one part was for forging the cannons while the other ground and mixed the gunpowder. The wall has been built after he debated the issue of safety for an hour with Naoki. Having red-hot metal and gunpowder together was obviously a bad idea. He was not satisfied with even the current setup and wanted to move the gunpowder unit out of the city as soon as possible. Walking through another door, he reached the storehouse.


    There were 20 of the black metal cannons stored inside. Robert let out a slight smile seeing this magnificent view. There were small bags of gunpowder and a large pile of cannonballs too. Robert could already imagine an army equipped with these weapons destroying any opposition.


    Coming out of the building, Sophy was already standing there outside, observing the test fire of a new cannon in the firing range.


    ¡°Boom!¡±


    Another cannon was ready to go!


    Robert walked towards Sophy who was dazed by the power of cannon, Seeing Robert was near her, she asked.


    ¡°So what do you think?¡±


    ¡°About the cannon? Pretty powerful huh!¡±,Robert answered.


    ¡°Not about the cannon stupid. About the weapon sales increasing,¡±Sophy asked angrily.


    ¡°That, I think some kind of war is going to happen¡±


    ¡°That is what I thought too, But Uncle Naoki is deducing that there''s going to be a Coup d''¨¦tat ¡±


    Sophy went on to explain the two faction that was going head to head, the families, and the Cutthroat¡¯s valley. She also explained how they won¡¯t be in any trouble as they had the banner of Black Dragon clan. Still, Robert couldn¡¯t understand why all these are happening now. What had changed to cause unbalance in the equilibrium of power between all these factions?


    Although he loved peace times, a war was not necessarily bad, especially now that he was selling weapons.


    The leaders of both large families were preparing for a war. Their top level spies within the Snake skulls had given the information that Yugimi was preparing to take over the city. There was also the rumors about a man who looked like devil incarnate was with Yugimi. They understood the fact that unless one had enough power backing them, what Yugimi was doing was a suicide. Thus rushed to buy as many weapons as they possibly can. And there was also the matter of this mysterious man who had appeared by Yugimi¡¯s side.


    A group of hundred riding atop elemental panthers suddenly slowed down seeing structures at a distance. A man made a clicking noise and his air elemental panther jumped up high. A wind blew up the cloaks of the men near him, getting about 10 meters high he floated there for a few seconds and observing the landscape before him. He landed down softly and notified the group that they had at last reached the city of Goldfair.

 Chapter 18 : Retreat Return Revenge

    The sun has begun to set and the sky was red, a hundred men atop elemental Panthers arrived in front of the city gates. The guards at the gates couldn¡¯t believe their eyes. Although they had seen many spirit animals, a horde of hundred spirit animals was a nightmare. If one could ride atop a spirit animal, their strength should be no less than that of the spirit animal. They were at a loss on what to do,


    The city hall was in utter chaos, it was not just any hundred men, but they were atop of elemental panthers. Although these spirit beasts were only mid-grade, they were certainly above anything even the two large families possessed. What are they supposed to do? They couldn¡¯t even assess if these were friends or foes. If they were friends it would be a good news. But what if they were enemies? What if this is the trump card that Yugimi possessed? Finally, the city hall elders and both the heads of families went out to see the uninvited guests.


    The skinny men atop panthers were patient and waited for the arrival of someone to meet them, they had the discipline of elite soldiers. After a while, the city hall¡¯s two elders and heads of two families came out of the city gates. But after seeing the appearance of these men, they suddenly understood which side they were in. The intel that there was someone that looked like a devil with Yugimi was verified. And now a hundred men looking like devil incarnates has arrived at city gates, it was not hard to deduce the reason.


    There was no way they could compete with hundred experts! There was only a total of 40 expert magic users in the city and less than 10 spirit animal mounts. This time a true disaster has stricken upon them. They immediately sent a few men to gather all the experts in the city, they even sent men to the branches of larger clans in hope of getting their help. The national level clans had many experts protecting their assets in this city.


    But before they could get a reply, the group of men in front of city gates made a move. Five Panthers jumped up high, their riders taking out wands and casting a spell each. 5 fireballs the size of footballs flew, lighting up the dawn. The fireballs were like flaming meteors they blasted the city gate into ruins. Many soldiers guarding atop of it was instantly burned to death and the few who survived that fell to their demise. The group of hundred marched through the city street. The man leading the group had a compass-like instrument which pointed to a direction, the castle of Snake skulls.


    The news of the men atop of Panthers had already arrived in the Black Dragon mansion. Hearing the description of the men Robert felt a chill down his spine. The description was eerily reminiscent of the man that had tortured Riley to death!


    ¡°This is not good,¡± Robert thought, He loathed his decision of supporting war earlier. There was no way he could catch fish in this troubled waters, especially not when there were sharks in this waters.


    But before he said anything, after hearing that the men were atop of panthers with different color stripes, Sophy immediately made a decision, retreat!


    Being the daughter of the Black Dragon clan, she had a vast amount of knowledge. And she knew that elemental panthers were not present in the Kingdom of Lorvale. It was a species used for transport in the North Eastly Empire. Speed and endurance being their characteristics, they were not used by merchants but usually by the army! And if they were here it meant that either that North Eastly had invaded Lorvale or they were a group of rebels. Whatever their reason for arrival might me, it was not good for Goldfair city.


    Either there might be a powerful army chasing after them or they will be chased away by the Lorvale¡¯s army. Sophy had already had intel about the man with Yugimi and understood the situation.


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    The goldfair city was going to fall into Snake skull¡¯s hands. And although they wouldn¡¯t dare to touch the Black dragon, these men were different. She hastily prompted Robert to prepare to leave and rushed to get into a carriage that was pulled by a muscular cheetah. The cheetah was double the size of a normal wild cheetah, it was a low-grade spirit animal!


    Robert only took some of the golden spell books, the magic cells in the tubes his small instruments and his gun with him. Before he left he had ordered something which made Sophy frown. He had told manager Naoki to buy some small houses around the city and hide a gunpowder cannon in each of them, along with the gunpowder supply, cannonballs, and guards. Sophy had already ceased procuring gunpowder raw materials, but Robert reminded her again to dispose of anything left in the factory.


    The carriage convoy quickly exited the city through the west gate. Manager Naoki has refused to leave as it was his duty to protect the assets of black dragon clan. The convoy had the personal guards of sophy and the hunting party that was put together by Naoki. The carriage other than that was filled with spirit stones and gold.


    Spirit cannon sounds rang out from the city as the carriages traveled through the meadows.


    Robert was sitting across Sophy in the carriage, the sweet fragrance of her expensive perfume filled the carriage.


    ¡°We are going to Greyston town,¡± Sophy softly said.


    ¡°Oh!¡±, Robert exclaimed. Greyston was a mining town and was sitting in the middle of a large trade route that carried many minerals and metals. Currently, Black Dragon clan controlled the town, and that was how Sophie was able to obtain the raw materials for the gunpowder without arousing suspicion.


    Sophy then explained why she decided to retreat. When Robert heard about Yuuma, he asked Sophy about the appearance of Yugimi. She hasn¡¯t seen him but the carriage driver had and explained him to Robert. And sure enough, it was the same man that had been the old man that killed Riley.


    Robert let out a sigh. He had hidden the cannons in the city for selling them as a service later on to anyone whom the Lorvale will send to recapture the city. But now he had the chance to exact revenge for Riley by this too. Although he was unhappy to leave the city, the knowledge that the enemy that he needs to kill is nearby made him a bit happy.


    Although he was retreating, for now, he was doing the right thing. He didn¡¯t have the power to go against one of that man, let alone a hundred spirit animals and experts. He must increase his power level, his experiments had already cost him the valuable time that could have been used to cultivate and get powerful in the traditional manner.


    It doesn¡¯t matter much though, the traditional ways of cultivation were compatible with his method and he can switch between the two anytime. Also, the higher power level he had in cultivation, the chance of successful mass generation will increase.


    Retreat for now and return for revenge. Robert said to himself.


    Sophy was also thinking of a way to recapture the city. As a representative of one of the largest clan, it was also her duty to protect the city. But she was the same as Robert, powerless for now. She decided the Greyston town as the retreat point to enable the maximum production of the weapons that Robert made. If a group of hundred normal soldiers is equipped with this guns, she was sure that they could retake the city.


    The carriage convoy traveled through the woods and reached the Greyston town. The only notable resistance in the path was a pack of wolves that attacked the convoy. But the guards that just happened to be on the lookout for something to vent their anger of leaving the city took this chance and furiously killed all those wolves.

 Chapter 19 : Electronics and Magic Runes

    This particular town was situated in a valley, between two rather large and long hills that bordered the trade route, the terrain was mountainous and had a lot of ore deposits. While this strategic placement allowed the town to be rich in ores and be a major trade route, The spirit animals that dwelled in the mountains caused troubles for the town, rather frequently,


    The town Greystone had a city wall that was at least 20 foot high, the wall had a black blood stain all over the stone texture. Sophy explained the problem of spirit animals raiding the city, and Robert understood the need for such a large city wall. There was a large banner in the gate showing a ferocious black dragon, representing the authority of black dragon clan over the town.


    Entering through the raised grills of the gate, they entered a large street.


    The sides had all sort of weapon shops and blacksmiths, the atmosphere reeked of smoke that was arousing from all these workshops. There were carts filled with metals and ores being brought into these shops with horses and by oxen.


    It was sunrise and the orange-yellow light of the sun illuminated the smog, from the carriage Robert could see many people near the streets bowing towards the carriage.


    They reached a large shop bearing the black dragon banner. It was a four-story building filled with everything from raw ores to high-end weapons. They walked into the top floor of the building to find a large hall that leads to the living quarters of the Black dragon family. Although it was not as spacious as the luxurious mansion in the Goldfair city, this was certainly a place for living for the nobles.


    Robert didn¡¯t spend much time up in the living quarters and went down to the store to explore. The floor right beneath the living area was filled with various types of magical equipment. There were light orbs that can light up whole buildings. There were magically enchanted locks that had a sound alarm in it, there was some kind of biometric locks that opened on touch.


    What he was interested in was not really the final products, he wanted to see how these things were made. Half of the floor was a magical workshop, walking in, he felt like he had walked into an electronic workshop, there were papers with magical runes in a table.A skinny man that was in his forties was putting in a crystal ball into the middle of a magical rune in a paper. He was wearing a white cloak.


    The runes in the paper reminded Robert of a simple light bulb and switch circuit. Instead of a battery, there was a spirit stone and a dark stone. There was already a crystal ball in the paper, and the man was certainly trying to increase the power of the thing by putting in another crystal ball. There was already a lot of burned paper lying around the man, and the floor was scattered with exploded crystal balls.


    ¡°Try connecting them in series instead of parallel¡±, Robert said.


    The man who was trying to fix the crystal ball into the runes was so immersed in his work that he didn¡¯t see Robert sneaking up behind him. He jumped in scare and dropped the crystal ball, adding to the pile of broken crystals on the floor.


    ¡°Sorry, You are not supposed to be here,¡± The man told Robert.


    After explaining that he was with Sophy the man introduced himself.


    ¡°I am Darell, the chief researcher of magic runes of black dragon clan. The people at Capital city wont even allow me to research in peace there,¡±


    Darell had run away from the capital city as he was tired of all the responsibilities that were placed upon him there. He just wanted to live a carefree life, he just wanted to do his research and make more inventions when he can and just live his life like that. In the capital, he was made to bath every day and eat food at times, there were maids and servants that didn¡¯t even allow him to work overtime. Darell just wanted to work.


    Robert only gave a brief introduction of himself before changing the subject back to the magic runes.


    ¡°Have you tried to connect it in series?¡±, Robert took a paper and pen and drew a series circuit the same way the magic runes were drawn.


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    After seeing this, Darell frowned for a second before trying it out. After putting the two crystal lights into the circuit in series, he told Robert to walk back as he expected it to explode.


    But instead of exploding, both the lights lighted up brightly, Darell was so happy that he hugged Robert so tightly making him suffocate. Then he ran out to the store to bring in everyone he saw to show this. Only he knew how much research he had put into this thing. He had tried to increase the power of spirit stones, only to watch the crystal balls explode. He has tried many different materials for the crystal balls. What he didn¡¯t dare to tweak were the magic runes that had been in use since ancient times.


    But this man, Robert had just walked in and made a small tweak in the design making it work!


    Darell didn¡¯t want to leave Robert alone after this, he dragged Robert into the laboratory to ask nonstop questions.


    Robert used this opportunity to understand the magic runes of this world. They were very similar to the electronics on earth. There was a power source the spirit stone, which provided magic power. The channels were made of an alchemical potion. The power flowed from the spirit stone into the dark stone and anything that was in between them got the magic power.


    The crystal balls that lit up earlier were made of crystal and an alchemical preparation from animals that glowed in the dark. There was also small motor like things that made it possible to have locks other moving mechanisms.


    Robert spent a lot of time with Darell learning everything he can about this art. Darell was surprised that this young man Robert was able to understand even the toughest runes at a glance. Even the best scholars in the capital were unable to learn these things this easily.


    What he didn¡¯t know was that these so-called runes were all for serving purposes of different components in an electrical circuit.


    There was a glyph which had intricate design that didn¡¯t touch one another, but formed a single lined design. It was used for reducing the magic power, but Robert understood the design at a glance. It was supposed to increase the length of the circuit and thus increasing the resistance. Similar to the resistor in the Earth and was made of certain special alchemical preparations.


    There was also a glyph that looked like two zigzag lines with a small amount of space between them. Robert guessed that it must be a capacitor, and his guess was right. It was used to store magic for short term! A similar usage as that of the capacitor.


    Robert went down to the part that sold raw materials to see if he could find anything interesting there. He saw ores of different kinds, but nothing surprising.


    Robert spent the rest of the day designing a flintlock mechanism. He had only seen the flintlock gun in pictures and videos and had no idea about their structures. The only thing he was sure of was that he needed a spring for that thing to work. He worked with the blacksmiths to create a spring mechanism for the prototype and let them forge many types of designs that he had doodled. He also wanted the blacksmiths to create barrels for the guns that he was going to create.


    Sophy was busy setting up a new factory for the production of gunpowder and cannons. As the Black Dragon clan controlled the city, getting a blacksmith shack to be converted into the forge for the cannon was easy. She also took over a food mill in order to grind the raw materials for the gunpowder.


    Everyone was busy that day, the magic runes researcher Darell had many insights from Robert that he refused to go to sleep and insisted on continuing his work at night. The blacksmiths were forging black iron into the weird shapes that Robert had drawn. The merchants were busy acquiring raw materials. The usually silent atmosphere of the shop was now loud from all the activity.


    The news of Goldfair city reached them that evening. The Snake skulls had taken over the city and executed the top tier of the major families. Thugs were running amok in the city. The Snake skulls have imposed a hefty tax upon the merchants and worst of all, no one is allowed to leave the city unless they produced bail money that was only returned upon their return.

 Chapter 20 : New Gun, New Spells

    The work on flintlock was progressing at snail''s pace. Robert¡¯s design was lacking in many ways and the chance of successful firing of the gun was still pretty low. He had redesigned the gun many times, but the sparks that were created by the flintlock mechanism was still lacking.


    After many unsuccessful attempts, Robert decided to ask for help. Waking up Darell who was sleeping with tiredness due to an all-nighter, Robert asked him if there were any fire runes. The answer was a good news for him, there existed fire runes. But the problem was that they were costly. It might be profitable to put them in the large cannons, but spending that much money for a gun was not an option. There was also the problem that the paper carved with runes cannot be folded. This meant that if they are implemented as such in guns, the size of guns will be too large in order to accommodate the firing mechanism.


    He will either have to create a new miniaturized rune that was affordable or search for another mechanism. Time was important and Sophy wanted to retake Goldfair city as soon as possible. She had set a time limit of two weeks, as she expected the arrival of the army from the capital by then. If she could finish this job without any help from the royal army, it will increase the prestige of Black dragon clan in the kingdom as well as her own status within the Black Dragon clan.


    Robert had his own plans. He had set the request for control over the Greyston town after they capture the Goldfair city. Having control over a city with hundred times more population and proportional income was a fair deal. But Sophy hesitated and set a bunch of conditions before accepting it.


    There was no way she could retake the city without the help of Robert, and Robert was adamant on the condition he placed. Finally, she had to agree. Robert was happy that he was soon going to have control over a town.


    Robert designed a new mechanism for the gun, he didn¡¯t know if this design has ever been used before and he was not sure if it will work. he named it hot-rod firing pin. It consisted of a metal rod that was constantly heated up by an oil lamp in the back of the gun, the top of the back of barrel was slidable and rounds can be loaded from the top, the cartridge was then attached to the trigger mechanism which moved the cartridge back into the firing pin. The cartridge was designed to have a hole in which the hot rod was inserted into to fire the round.


    The final design was much complex than he expected but was still something that can be produced by the skilled blacksmiths of the store.


    The design was soon forged by the blacksmiths into a gun. The firing pin was made with a rare metal that was hard to reshape in even By high-level fire magi.


    Now he had made a gun that can be compared to the ones on earth. Robert looked at the final design and his mouth curved into a smile, he could already envision an automatic weapon.


    The final gun and a few cartridges were prepared, as always Robert was expecting an explosion instead of the successful working. Gladly that did not happen. There was the problem of the blowback from the explosion putting out the fire on the oil lamp. Robert fixed this by positioning the lamp lower and using a longer wick and air vents.


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    Adding a lever to eject the spent cartridge, Robert finalized the design. After making one more similar gun, he spread out the blacksmiths that worked in it to different workshops in the town to produce the maximum number of guns as quickly as possible. The design doesn¡¯t need to be secret as anyone who saw one of these guns will be able to remake it. So he strictly guarded the gunpowder as a secret and other designs not so confidential.


    An open area near the store was remodeled in a hurry into a firing range and the guns were being tested there. The guns were fixed in a stand to fire at a target in the distance, once it was made sure that there was no problem with the gun, they were then stored in a warehouse. Sophy was overseeing the selection of people to train with the guns in the city center.


    Robert took the free time to increase his power level. There were so many spirit stones lying around in the store that he didn¡¯t have any scarcity of cultivation resources. Meditating with a spirit stone in his hand, he absorbed the magical energy into his mysticle.


    His cultivation speed could only be described as average, but persisting through it and having a good supply of resources, his cultivation soon reached 7th level apprentice.


    He opened the spellbooks that he had bought from the city, they talked about using magic spells. Although Robert didn¡¯t understand how it worked, the glyphs were logical enough to understand. The spell for fireball was drawing a triangle, a circle surrounding it, and then a line that pointed towards the target. The fireball was cast and it took only a fraction of the energy that took when he cast fireballs earlier.


    He understood the reason, there was a variable while casting a spell using these glyphs. The size of the circle was proportional to the size of the fireball that was summoned. The size of triangle controlled the heat of the spell, and the line controlled the trajectory. He was amazed by the simpleness of this spells. Even a kid could do it!


    But the fire grimoire only had a few spells in it, the fireball, flaming hand, fire chain was some among them.


    The flaming hand was the one that required the least effort, all you had to draw was a triangle in your hand with the energy and your hands will be in flames for ten seconds. The fire chain was a chain of fireballs and although it had limited uses, the spell was long and tedious.


    Robert had bought other elemental grimoires too and opened up each to find that everything was built on the same basis. A water-ball had a wave, a circle, and a line. A stone summoning spell had a rectangle a circle and a line. The only difference was the 1st glyph which represented the elements.


    Triangle- fire


    Square-Earth


    Spiral-Air


    Y shape- Wood


    Wave-water


    Does this mean that he can create a flaming stone? He wanted to test it out but had already used up all his energy.


    He studied all the different glyphs to understand their meanings. He also wanted to know if these spells were compatible with the magic runes that Darell was researching. He also wanted to get a magic wand, thus making him effective in combat.

 Chapter 21 : Projectile equations

    The gathering of men for the militia was progressing smoothly. The reward Sophy had declared for the men joining the resistance was quite appealing. Recruited hunters and gatherers have been training hard in the fields with the guns.


    The production of guns was also proceeding at a good pace. The workshops were able to produce about fifty guns a day. Gunpowder production which required more secrecy was not able to keep up with the demand that was sky high due to the need for practice.


    The target wall for practice has been riddled with holes. The accuracy of these men was increasing with each round. The reloading was a series of actions that was easy to follow and these men who only had basic literacy was happy for the easiness of the operation.


    Robert had requested for a map of Goldfair city as he was still unsure of its complete view. He had only said to Naoki to hide the cannons in houses that were within the range of cannons.


    He took the map and marked the distances and angles of all the cannons. He still hadn''t calculated the elevation of the barrels.


    He had taken readings from the cannon and what¡¯s left to do was to use the equations of projectile motion to calculate the range at each angle.


    Robert took a paper and derived the equations of projectile motion. Being a physicist he could do this simple equation even blindfolded. All that was left now was to find the constant of gravity and the initial velocity. He was unsure if the gravity of this planet was the same as that of Earth. Even if it was the same, he didn¡¯t have a scale to measure that value on.


    Borrowing the pocket chronograph from Darrell, Robert went off to find the gravitational acceleration of this planet. Climbing into the top of the tallest tower, he dropped a brick to the ground and calculated the time it took to fall.


    All the men who walked by were amused by this sight, someone was taking up heavy stones just to throw it down. Are they crazy?


    After measuring the height of the building he calculated the gravitational acceleration to put in his projectile equations. With the equations in his hand, Robert went straight to the firing range, and that¡¯s when he realized that he didn¡¯t have a protractor.


    Measuring angles required protractor and Robert had no idea on how to make one. He could take a paper and fold it a few times to get some angles, but they would not be enough for the artillery that required precision.


    He thought about it for a while before coming up with a way to create a protractor. He took a long but thin rod and marked 72 half inch parts. Then bend it into a circle, he had created a protractor that had 5 degrees least count.


    ¡°This would do for now,¡± Robert said to himself. He wanted to create one that had 360 degrees like on Earth. But as the cannons that he had created itself were not perfect and there was no reason for having a smaller least count. Fitting in the protractor in the cannon, with the help of two men, he angled the barrel to be at 45 degrees to find the maximum range of it and calculate the initial velocity he required.


    The men that were helping Robert do this had taken a peek into the papers Robert had. Seeing the glyphs and weird writing methods they had never seen before, deduced that it must be the spells that powered the cannon.


    Happy with the results, Robert redesigned the cannons to have two protractors. Equipping them for long distance artillery use.


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    The plan that Robert had made to take back the Goldfair city was inspired by the Trojan Horse that the Greeks had used to sneak in forces into the city of Troy to win the war. What was different now was that there was no need for any wooden horses. Goldfair city didn¡¯t stop anyone from coming in, the restriction was only on those who were going out.


    The only problem that Robert now faced was the absence of a stealth factor in this attack. Once a gun is fired, their position will be compromised and will have to enter into a head-on war with the forces of Snake skulls and the experts.


    The intel from Goldfair city said that these men were stationed at the city hall and Yugimi¡¯s castle. Robert thought of an idea, but it required something that he hasn¡¯t yet made. Rifles, sniper rifles to be exact. He had the lenses that were required to make scopes and it was no problem fitting them in the currently manufactured guns. But the problem with these smoothbore guns was the low accuracy, especially at long ranges. What Robert wanted was to take out the experts from a distance. He didn¡¯t want to have a range of a kilometer or anything, having a good accuracy at a 100-meter range was already good enough for this battle.


    Robert had an idea with the metal that was used for the firing pins. The high melting point of this metal and the existence of fire magus should solve his problem with rifling. Gathering three blacksmiths, he explained what was needed to be done. They created a bulged rod with a small twist. With much effort, they passed this rod, twisting it as it entered the barrel.


    This made Robert realize that he needed to create something like a lathe for making it easier to build things.


    Robert had created the rounds to have an aerodynamic shape like those from Earth instead of the metal balls that was loaded into the guns. He had already instructed a blacksmith to create a mold to create these shells and it was making a good amount of bullets already.


    Fitting the gun in a stand and shooting it into a target at a distance, Robert was astonished by the results. At fifty meters, the bullet had found its target without any hitch. Repeating the experimental firing the deviation of the bullet from target was really small. The gun, as expected had an increased accuracy, Robert was amazed by how a little spin added this much accuracy to the gun.


    Next up was to find a few snipers. He was not sure what training the snipers went through or anything, all he knew was that they held their breath when they fired. Robert was not sure if he could cook up a training regime based on that, and thus wanted to find if anyone around here was a natural sharpshooter.


    After sending off the blacksmiths to make some more rifles, Robert called up Nenand, he was the sub-head of town guards of Grayston. After explaining the breathing technique, he wanted Nenand to make every one of the town¡¯s men to shoot three rounds. Then to select the best ten persons to become the elite snipers.


    He still had many things to prepare for the D-day. Making some big bombs and canister shells for the cannons were the two most important things that were yet to be done. He had an idea on how to make things go boom as he had already done that. But making the most effective bomb still required experiments.

 Chapter 22 : Rocket artillery

    Fire and run!


    Robert gave his usual advice for the guy who was going to fire the cannon. Robert genuinely cared for the lives of these men and if possible, he wanted to avoid any casualties in this dangerous mission they were undertaking.


    The young man nodded and went to the cannon. This time the cannon was the same as ever, but Robert had made changes in the cannonballs. He hollowed out a cannonball and filled it up with black powder. He was trying to recreate the cannonballs that he usually saw in movies, the ones that exploded when it landed.


    But soon he realized that it was not that easy, just adding gunpowder and an extra fuse was the method he came up with. But the problem lied on the timing of the explosion of the cannonball. Sometimes the cannonball exploded after landing, sometimes mid-air, there was also an occasion where it exploded inside the barrel, gladly Robert¡¯s "fire and run!" The method made sure that no one got hurt.


    Nenand was still testing out people to find some with good aim, he had already picked three, Robert¡¯s instruction was to get as many as he can. Being the perfectionist that he was, Nenand only wanted the best men to go into this elite sharpshooters unit that Lord Robert was creating. Nenand had tried his hands on the aim test too, but he was just above average in the sharpshooting skills. He was better with swords and hoped that Robert will invent something for him to use too. Although he was average with guns, having an athletic body, he was chosen by Robert to be a ¡°Grenadier.¡± Nenand was still not sure what that meant and what they did. But he was happy that he was not sidelined by someone else.


    Robert had his own reasons for keeping Nenand in command. He wanted someone who was a familiar face and already commanding these men to do that role in this mission. And Nenand was the perfect candidate. He had the valor and courage, the leadership quality and he thought before giving a command.


    Robert had arranged men to clean the guns regularly as the black powder left behind dirt, jamming the mechanisms and might cause a backfire. The field was filled with explosions and there was a thick smokescreen that reduced the visibility very much as the black powder created a lot of grey smoke.


    Robert still needed something that he could use against the experts they were facing, he had two ideas, one a machine gun and the second, a hwacha!


    He had the general idea to create a Gatling gun, there were six barrels spun by a cranking mechanism, there was a trigger mechanism that fired when a barrel reached a certain position. But the problem was the bullet loading mechanism, he would have to design either a magazine or a chain mechanism for loading the bullets into the gun. He was not sure if he even makes one of those guns within the two weeks, and thus decided to go with the Hwacha, an artillery weapon from the history of Korea.


    It was basically a cart loaded with a number of projectiles that was used as a long-range weapon in ancient times, but what Robert wanted was a barrage of explosives in short range.


    And Robert was happy as he was entering one of his area of expertise! He had built many model rockets and was confident in this one area.


    Taking a metal tube and melting one end shut, he put in a stick in the middle and filled it with black powder. Thickly packing the grains in he used a piece of clay to create a nozzle for the gases to get pressurized on.


    He used another larger metal tube to hold the rocket and fired it using a fuse. With a whistling sound, the rocket flew up into the air, leaving a trail of smoke and fire behind.


    All that was left now was to add explosives into the end of the rocket. Adding a thickly packed gunpowder into the end of the tube with a metal divider and fire hole was enough for creating an explosion. He used a thin wrap for the explosives as he was not planning to hurt anyone now.


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    The rocket flew up with a whistling noise and exploded into a ball of flame in the sky.


    Seeing this Robert was grinning foolishly.


    He then tweaked the amount of gunpowder to make it so that the rocket exploded at about 20-meter range and increased the number of explosives. He was really enjoying the explosions, that he was afraid that he was turning into a psychopath.


    After experimenting with many rockets, Robert drew a picture and passed it to the blacksmiths for forging. This was a wooden board that had 100 holes in a 10x10 matrix in it, each of the holes was fixed with a metal tube for loading rockets.


    The next design was a rail mechanism that held the wooden board, this was for making it so that there can be more than one of the hwacha in a single cart. Robert had confirmed that carts were being allowed into the city unchecked before making this hwacha. He ordered to have a horse cart repurposed a to hold five of these boards, effectively giving 500 rockets.


    He taught the apprentices of the store on how to make rockets, but all of them were supervised by a person whom Sophy trusted.


    The store had been working on full steam for days now. Making guns, cannons, rifles, bombs and now the addition of hwacha made sure that there was nobody had any free time. Even Darrel was busy researching a new rune to create a small fireball to be used in guns.


    Robert decided to practice some magic as that was the only way he could increase his personal power.


    Getting in his room and taking a bath, Robert sat in meditation to experiment with the spells. He had planned a lot of spells but didn¡¯t have time for testing any of those. Now that he had the time he immediately tested out an earth spell. He successfully created a stone ball and threw it just like the fireball.


    The next one was the experimental part, he wanted to test two things, drawing a fire glyph followed by an earth glyph, a circle and finally a trajectory. He successfully summoned a rock, its surface filled with cracks, with flames coming through it.


    ¡°As expected!¡± Robert exclaimed.


    He tossed the rock into a bucket of water, the ball cooled down giving off a hiss of steam from within.


    The next spell was the inverse of what he had just done, by covering the earth glyph with the fire glyph, he created a flaming rock. Just like the one he had created when he was fighting with the thugs in Goldfair.


    The difference was that this time the casting of the spell required only a fraction of the time that he required earlier and he felt that he could still make ten of those things and still have leftover energy!


    He tried various combinations of earth and fire symbols to make the spells better in many ways. The defense skills of the earth-chain combined with the offense of fire chain was a great improvement in the base spell¡¯s power.


    Robert was about to go into another spell when he heard a knock on the door. With a pushing action, he used earth magic to hide the bucket that had been filled with the summoned earthen stuff into another room and got up to open the door.


    Robert opened the door to see a very happy Darell. He had a piece of paper which had a smaller pyramid-like structure in it.


    ¡°See this, see this.¡± Darrell took a spirit stone from his pocket and placed it in a line that originated from the base of the pyramid, and the moment it touched, the pyramid lit up like a candle.


    Seeing this Robert became even happier than Darell. This was huge! He could use this technology to trigger the guns and that would allow for the creation of better weapons. He could already envision his militia running rampage with a bunch of assault rifles.

 Chapter 23 : Final preparations

    Two weeks passed rather quickly and uneventfully, the production of guns for hundred men was complete and two of the hwacha were also completely loaded with rockets. Robert had been sending in the soldiers in small numbers into the city since last week. They all got into the various safe houses without any hitch and was ready for action any time Robert ordered


    Robert assigned two fire magi to shoot the hwacha, and ten snipers were being trained intensively to use their rifles to the highest precision. Robert was still unable to include the new breakthrough of Darrell into the guns, as it required experienced rune creators for creating the mechanisms in large scale. Robert also took this two weeks to increase his level of cultivation and was now at level nine apprentice.


    Sophy was frowning at the paper that was on the table in front of her, in the last two weeks, almost all the stock saltpeter and sulfur from even the towns around here had gone dry. She had expected supply problems, but not this quickly. At Least the gunpowder that had already been produced was enough for them to go through the attack they were going to attempt at the Goldfair city.


    She was sure that they could take over the city and by defend it for a few days, a few days, at most four, was the time the army that had set off from the capital would arrive at the Goldfair city. She had already received the message that the army was on their way here.


    She dressed up and left the store in a carriage, to see how the training of the elite batch of the militia was going. The training with normal guns was already done and the only ones left were the snipers. Sophy had made a habit out of watching them improve their accuracy shooting different things down from the abandoned building tops into the streets. The usual targets were watermelons, and they had to shoot moving watermelons at that. Sophy deduced that these watermelons represented the heads of those experts atop the spirit beasts.


    Old man Naoki was able to insert a spy inside the castle of Snake skull and Robert wanted to use that spy to put in some bombs inside, causing some explosions making a chaos inside and thus smoking out everyone from inside. Robert had already found a way to make time bombs, the way he came up with was to use incense sticks! Even if he was unable to get synchronization, all he needed with these bombs was chaos. And the incense sticks gave a 30 minutes time for the spy to plant many of these and get out unscathed. And Robert had custom made the incense stick from a luxury shop so that it wouldn¡¯t have any smoke or odor. The thickness and length of the incense were also pretty standard, giving maximum synchronization.


    A hwacha fixed carriage was ready to leave to the Goldfair city, Robert decided to leave too. He wanted to be on the frontline, commanding, as the battle was happening.


    Dressing up, covering himself in a cloak, as to not get recognized by anyone among the people of Snake skull who might have seen him before, he got into a carriage. The first carriage had already left yesterday and safely got into the city.


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    Sophy was anxious about Robert going into the frontline, if she couldn¡¯t capture the city, that was just that, she will have many opportunities in the future to shine. But Robert was an asset that cannot be lost. She tried to keep him here at a safe distance, but Robert was stubborn on going to the city. She finally had to agree when he promised that he would not put himself in danger and will retreat into somewhere safe if the mission becomes a failure. He also had his five barreled guns with him to protect himself.


    Robert was still waiting for someone before he left, he had requested Darell to get him some signaling orbs, a red one for attack and a blue one for retreat. This was the way he planned to synchronize the attack to have the element of surprise.


    Finally, Darrell showed up with two glass orbs in his hands, Robert took them and stored them away safely. Bidding farewell to Sophy and Darrell, Robert and two of the snipers left for Goldfair city.


    ¡°So you guys are all from Greyston?¡± Robert broke the ice with a question, he was getting tired of the silence and these guys seemed like they were afraid to speak as he was here.


    ¡°I am from Goldfair, moved here ¡®cuz there were more animals to hunt ¡®ere¡± A burly man with large mustache spoke up.


    This man was Mike, although he was a sniper, what he was more interested in was to be on the frontline, taking out enemy soldiers. Long distance attacks didn¡¯t suit his personality. If he had one, he would have fought with a big gun, like a huge hand cannon.


    ¡°Unlike Mike, I was born here raised here, been to Goldfair only once,¡±This man was neither thick nor thin, he had a good build but was in no way muscular.


    ¡°Your name is?¡± Robert asked.


    ¡°He is called Isidro! And unlike me, he loves to kill from a distance, he was an archer in the army. A longbowman¡±


    Mike was a hunter and Isidro was a soldier, both of them loved to shoot the guns from the moment they first used it.


    Robert already chose their positions from their personalities. Let Mike be on the frontline, and Isidro is the one providing cover fire.


    The carriage got into the city without any problem, all they had to do was to give a few golds to the thugs that were guarding the gates. The carriage was moved into the back of a safe house that was near the castle. Mike and Isidro carried in the canister shells that was to be used in the cannon into the house one by one.


    The tiny house already had a cannon inside and a few men inside to operate it, now that the big Mike and two others have entered, it got crowded. Later few men came into the house to take canister shells into other cannon positions, and at evening, the spy of Naoki came in to get the time bombs.


    The preparations were complete. tonight, they were taking the Goldfair city back!

 Chapter 24 : Super Spy

    The spy of Naoki was named Dimitri, and right now he was very anxious, he was about to go into the castle of Snake skulls with a sack full of metal bricks and a bunch of burning incense in his hands. Remembering Robert¡¯s words made him even more afraid,


    ¡°Place these in the exits of corridors except the main one, and some in the guard¡¯s bunks if possible, and get the hell out of there before the incense sticks burn out¡±


    Robert told him that the castle was going up in flames, all thanks to what he was about to do.


    with a bundle of smoking incense sticks in his hands, looking like a walking chimney, Dimitri walked into the Castle, only to be stopped by the guards.


    ¡°Stop there, What the hell is this brother? Are you trying to smoke everyone out of the castle?¡± The guard that stopped Dimitri broke into a laugh. He has seen Dimitri coming into the castle to work and was thus had acquaintance with him.


    ¡°Indeed, Boss Yugimi had ordered to smoke out the bugs that are in his room,¡± Dimitry paused a moment before continuing ¡°Are you sure you want to make lord lose his sleep?¡±


    Dimitri had a sense of humor and quick wit, he had the thought pattern of a fox. Although he was not someone who can make up strategies or lead wars, this made him the perfect candidate for spying and sabotage.


    ¡°Oh, so it¡¯s that. No wonder Boss was so irritable for the last few days!¡± The guard nodded in understanding.


    ¡°So what is in the sack?¡± It was his job to make sure that nothing dangerous was brought into the castle and thus queried.


    ¡°Its some holders for the incense sticks, wanna check?¡±


    After showing the box-shaped brick like bombs to the guard, Dimitri went on and on about the medicinal properties of the black powder that was inside.


    The guard smelled it and decided that it was just as Dimitri described, and allowed him to enter the castle.


    Dimitri had his back covered with cold sweat when he was being questioned by the guard. Getting into the castle, he immediately started doing what Robert had instructed.


    He already knew the structure and pathways of this castle. It had most of its rooms and halls opening into corridors, if the exits were blocked, they would have no other ways to go out. He was not sure why Robert wanted a single pathway that had an opening from every corridor into and led to the main entrance to not be blocked.


    Isidro waited atop a high building in the Cutthroat¡¯s valley, silently observing a man mounted on an elemental panther, patrolling the streets. He had his rifle and a bag of ammo resting near him, He had been assigned to this post and was to observe the experts and track their movements, his job was to get as many headshots as soon as he gets the signal. Isidro was really waiting for that moment, Robert had promised them a good position in his personal army if this mission was to go as they planned.


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    Isidro had a good view of the cityscape before him and seeing the large picture, he was able to grasp the core of many of Robert¡¯s orders. Robert had ordered to move the Hwacha into the street, along with a hidden cannon. The hwacha was inside a carriage and didn¡¯t need any hiding. From here he saw that this cannon had a straight view into the entrance of the castle. The other hwacha was at the opposite entrance of the castle.


    The militiamen were starting to gather in front of the castle and in the street, they didn¡¯t stand out from the crowd of thugs in the Cutthroat¡¯s valley. Many wore dark cloaks that covered the guns with them.


    Robert had grouped the men so that every group had a fire mage in it, thus they would be able to light up the lamps inside the guns when the time comes. The men had been strictly ordered to not hold the gun in any way that will extinguish the flame, the lamps worked on vegetable oil and thus reduced the danger of exploding or flaming up.


    Mike was in the frontline, the street, waiting for the signal. His orders were to begin the attack either when explosions rang out from the castle, or a red signaling light orb exploded in the sky. He had a group of men that had normal guns around him.


    He was the long-range attacker and if someone happened to escape his sniping, the others would take them out in closer ranges. Mike checked his gun and ammo for one last time, he also had the responsibility of keeping an eye on one of the experts on the streets. After taking out this expert, his job was to be the rearguard of the attack, to guard against anyone from outside the Cutthroat¡¯s valley attacking them.


    Dimitri was running around the castle placing the bombs on the exits of corridors, there were a large wall and stone doors in all these places and if they exploded, would definitely create a blockade as they planned. He stopped only to pass the random soldier walking by, Dimitri smiled, nodded or greeted them just like it was any other day. He truly had the skills for being a good spy.


    Dimitri placed all the required bombs with a little more length of the incense stick to spare. Looking into the sack and seeing that he still had three more bombs, He decided to place them somewhere that would really do some damage.


    His targets were the bunks of the guards, he stealthily entered into one and placed all the rest of the bombs in that room, at a distance. Tiptoeing out of the room, he walked towards the exit.


    Dimitri walked out of the castle, the last incense stick in his hand that was used to know the time of the explosion was about to be burned out. Just after he got out of the castle and made a small distance, the first explosion rang out from the castle.


    ¡°BOOM!¡±


    If the scene was seen by someone from Earth, it would have looked just like those badass heroes walking away from explosions in movies.

 Chapter 25 : Battle For Goldfair City Begins

    Robert waited anxiously for the sound of an explosion from the castle. Dimitri had given the signal that he was going to set the bombs earlier, and the time it takes for the fuses to burn was almost up. He had a signaling orb in his hand, which he had to light up on the explosion. The wait didn¡¯t last long, a few minutes later an explosion rang out from the castle.


    Robert immediately used the signaling orb. The crystal goblet like orb flew up to the air with a whistling sound. Reaching a height, it exploded into a red colored firework which stayed lit for about a minute. As Robert was using the light orb, many gunshots rang out from different building tops of Cutthroats valley.


    Isidro was keeping track of the expert through his scope when he heard the explosion from the castle. He took a look at the castle and making sure it was from the castle, he relaxed and aimed to the head of the expert who was looking to see where the sound came from and pulled the trigger.


    The cartridge moved backward and touched the metal pin that was red hot by the flames of the oil lamp inside the barrel. The gunpowder inside caught fire and the pressure rose up, pushing the metal bullet, rotating through the rifling of the barrel and exiting it. a trail of smoke and fire behind it. The bullet buzzed through the air seeking its target. In the next moment, the expert that was atop the fire element panther was lying on the ground, with a hole in his head.


    Isidro let out a sigh, it was his first ever kill with a gun. He then did the steps of reloading that he had done a thousand times over. In a few seconds, another round was in the chamber.


    He took aim at another expert, who had seen the other expert going down and was looking around to see how and why he was suddenly dead. He was alarmed by the explosion from the castle, but seeing his comrade that was near him go down, he immediately understood the situation and became on guard. He looked around to find the source of the arrow, which he guessed that killed his friend, but couldn¡¯t find the source. When he finally when he saw a man on the roof away from him with a metal rod in his hand, it was too late.


    The gun spat fire, he saw something black in front of him and everything went black for that expert. He died, just like that. Although he saw his attacker, although he saw the attack, even with his high cultivation, he was unable to defend himself. If it was an arrow, he could have just caught it with his bare hands, but at this moment he was unable to do anything. He was dead.


    Isidro reloaded the gun, his primary and secondary targets were down, now his next order was to snipe anyone who will be coming out of the castle. Just as he took the rifle from the initial position to have a better view of the castle, another explosion rang out from the castle.


    Isidro was enjoying this job. Although he was in the army before and had shot down many people from a distance, this was something new, a feeling of shooting down foes many times more powerful than that of himself. And doing so without even walking into the battlefield. Isidro truly had the heart of a sniper assassin.


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    Mike had only one target, and the moment the explosion rang out, he had already taken out his target. The men around him all began to take out their guns and moved towards the castle. Mike¡¯s next duty was to protect the Hwacha from being destroyed by any enemies from behind.


    The two men that were in charge of moving the hwacha pulled a lever on the back of the carriage and its roof came off. They all pushed the hwacha into the front of the castle, the men alongside them had begun to shoot and take out the thugs that had been standing around. Mike immediately hopped into the back of the carriage and started shooting down foes at a distance.


    He only had a single complaint. The reloading was too meddlesome, if he could shoot faster without caring about reloading, that was all he wanted.


    A cart with a man sitting on it, pushed by two men and surrounded by ten men, all aiming their guns at different directions moved through the street into the entrance of the castle.


    Five guards were standing atop one of the four corner towers of the city. They heard a small pop, followed by fireworks in the sky. Before they could even think, two men were lying on the ground, their heads bleeding from a fresh bullet hole. Sounds of guns rang out from the bottom of the tower, three men who seemed to be just passing by the tower suddenly pulled out a weird looking weapon and aimed at the guards that were guarding the tower at its base. Three shots and three men down. The attack from the gun at this close range was unavoidable and the men all had their leather armor pierced by the bullets that were aimed at their center mass.


    The three militiamen didn¡¯t wait around any longer, taking the shields from the fallen guards, they opened the tower''s door and entered it. The drill they had in the Greystone was crystal clear, do as they were ordered and they will be unscathed. Keeping the shields atop their heads, two men climbed the ladder that led to the top of the tower. While one guarded the base and the guns of the other two.


    The guards atop the tower were alarmed by the noises from below and immediately understood what was going on. The enemy was inside the city! They looked down the hatch to see two men, with shields above their head climbing the ladder. They all took their bows and crossbows, aimed, and fired. But the black iron shields that the guards were holding was not something that was easily pierced. They climbed to almost just five feet from the top, the arrows were now leaving dents in the shields, and it looked just as if the next one was going to pierce through.


    ¡°Ready?¡± The militiaman that was in the front asked.


    ¡°Ready!¡± Replying, the man threw his shield away and climbed closer to the man in front of him to get covered by his shield. Gripping with just one hand, he pulled a small metal sphere with a fuse from his pocket. A grenade! He was a fire mage, lighting the fuse and waiting for a second, he threw it through the open hatch to the top of the tower, and kept his head low to prepare for the explosion.


    Boom!


    Hearing the explosion, the men dropped the shield and climbed to the top of the tower, the tower was theirs now!

 Chapter 25 : Battle For Goldfair City - 2

    The same scene played out at all the towers of Goldfair city. The soldiers were trained to do one thing and they did it right. Only one of the tower required two grenades as the first one fell down, gladly the men atop the ladder quickly notified the man that was guarding the base and no one was hurt, except the enemies who were blown into smithereens of course.


    Yuuma was in meditation when the explosion rang out. Opening his eyes, his cold eyes stared through the window into the dark skies above. He made a light beckoning action and a man who was among the experts walked out from the darkness and bowed to Yuuma.


    The appearance of Yuuma was very different than before, there was a hint of vitality in his face and a little flesh above his bones. He seemed to be getting better.


    ¡°Go help them,¡± Yuuma said in a weak voice.


    ¡°Yes, master.¡±, the man bowed again and then with a kick to the ground, leaped forwards towards the door and disappeared from into the darkness of the corridor.


    Just as he was leaving, the second explosion rang out, closely followed by a third. Yuuma frowned, raising his hands to stroke his chin, he was still looking out into the darkness of the skies, pondering.


    Inside the castle, it was getting chaotic. The men who were sleeping all woke up from the noise of the explosion, and immediately started putting on their armor for battle. More explosions rang out, sometimes near, sometimes far. But the thugs were sure of one thing, the sound was all coming from inside the castle. They all became very scared, what in the actual hell is this noise? Even spirit cannons wouldn¡¯t make this much of a ruckus.


    A group of thugs was running to go outside the castle but soon realized a problem. The corridor that led to the side entrance of the castle was covered in a pile of rubbles, the exit was gone and replaced by a collapsed stone wall. They ran back through the way they came towards the next exit. Just as they were about to reach the open entrance, a ball of fire and smoke with a loud explosion made them all fall back. Many were injured, heavily, but more than that they all become mortified. This was their stronghold, and the one who cast the fireball upon them just now could be no ordinary mage. e must at least be a level above the experts with master Yugimi.


    ¡°Shit. we are no match for them, retreat!¡± the leader of the group ordered them to retreat, but where can they go? The corridors that led to the doors on the sides of the castle had all crumbled.


    The man that just beside Yuuma was also facing this situation, he tried two side doors, only to see his way blocked, and the third time he chose the longer route of the main gate to exit the castle. Running through the main corridor, he exited the castle, and the next moment, a bullet hit his shoulder. But unlike the other expert¡¯s whom the bullets pierced through the body, this man¡¯s body with a higher cultivation didn¡¯t let the bullet to pass fully through. It stuck inside his shoulder.


    Tilting his head a little, he looked at his bleeding shoulder, then gripped his sword and drew it from its sheath. The sword was silver in color, its spine a shiny red, as it was drawn from the sheath, it started to get ablaze. All this happened in an instant, and the next moment, he leapt towards the men who were advancing towards the castle.


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    ¡°Bang. Bang. Bang¡±


    Three bullets hit his chest but did almost nothing to do his advance.


    The first bullet had much more muzzle speed and momentum as it was a sniper round, but these iron balls that just hit him was not of enough momentum to pierce through his body.


    There were about seven more bullets that buzzed through the air, just beside him, but he was able to dodge most of them. Technically he was not dodging, he could only run in an unpredictable manner to escape from these high-velocity projectiles. And luck decided everything else.


    50 more meters.


    The man was advancing quickly, he wanted to get into the twenty-meter range to use his fireballs upon these puny rats who only knew how to sneak attack.


    He wanted to scare them and create chaos and thus swung his swords, sending fireballs from the sword to the advancing militiamen. He could have run much faster in a straight line, but it would lead to him being barraged with these metal balls and thus he decided against it.


    Another volley of bullets flew through the air, but only one found its target.


    Just as he was about to get in the twenty-meter range, the men that were moving forward all flanked to the sides, making a cart appear from behind them. The cart¡¯s front was full of holes, like a honeycomb. And suddenly a man jumped into the cart and tilted and aimed the board towards the expert.


    Flashes of fire erupted from the holes and something that looked like arrows flew at high speed towards the expert.


    ¡°Hmph. fancy arrows.¡±


    The projectiles he was facing till now couldn¡¯t be dodged or even seen while flying, these arrows were too slow.


    About ten arrows flew towards him, he simply sidestepped and dodged most of them and stood in the way of the last two, and caught them with his bare hands. The arrows still had a little black powder left in them and thus twitched in his hands like a worm, trying to escape his grasp.


    He had never seen anything like this before, he must collect these to study further. Or so he thought.


    The twitching stopped the next moment and a ball of flame and hot gases along with an explosion replaced his hands, stunned, he couldn¡¯t move for a second and the next rocket also exploded in his arms.


    The place his arms were, only two gory stumps remained.


    He was not sure what had happened. He was stunned at the power of the arrows that exploded in his arms that he didn¡¯t even realize that he was now without his arms.


    A few seconds passed and the smoke receded, leaving behind a burned, bullet-riddled body on the ground.


    Mike even made sure to give him a headshot just to make sure that this tenacious bastard was really dead.


    Lord Yuuma who was inside the castle felt something that ominous had happened.


    After the expert died, many thugs who had finally found an open entrance was trying to escape the inferno of explosions that was the castle, ran out, without knowing about the ambush that was waiting for them. The guns roared, and when the occasional metal plate armored thugs or experts who didn¡¯t die from the bullets appeared, the hwacha was fired.


    Seeing the carnage in front of them, the thugs all stopped in their tracks. They were truly between the devil and the deep sea.

 Chapter 26 : Battle For Goldfair City - 3

    <div>


    An expert who was in the Yuuma¡¯s army, wearing a shiny black coat, appeared through the doorway of the room Yuuma was in. His already pale face had became even pale seeing the carnage that had happened on the front and back gates. Explaining everything that had happened, he waited for Yuuma¡¯s order.


    His name was Amor, following Yuuma ever since he was 16, saying that he was Yuuma¡¯s left hand man wouldn¡¯t be false. He was only second to a man named Drago, whose current whereabouts was not even known to Amor. Below Amor there was 5 knights who served Yuuma in his fief. They were called death knights because of the slaughter they had brought upon their own people. Like grim reapers, they ordered to capture and test on humans. And when a test result was satisfiable, the subject¡¯s whole family would be made test subjects to know if the reason was blood related.


    One of these death knight was the man who had just fell on the front gates now. And if it wasn¡¯t for him underestimating the enemy and doing a foolish thing like catching an exploding arrow bare handed, the outcome would have been very different.


    Yuuma thought about what to do, he was at the verge of a break through, the experiments were getting closer and closer to success. If he continued his experiments, he was sure that within an year, he could reach the pinnacle of cultivation. In not just one but both the elements that he had in him. Fighting in person now was not a choice that he could make. The stakes were too high, and he was not sure of the extend of the powers of these strange weapons.


    Fire arrows that explode and metal balls that were ten times faster than arrows, there were also things that exploded walls into rumbles. Whomever his enemy was, they had executed the attack in a perfect manner. They had the element of surprise, the perfect timing and if they had taken down a castle, he was sure they would have also taken all the other strategic points in the city.


    He had no interest in the city, the lone reason he helped Yugimi get power was to get a constant flow of test subjects to experiment on. The situation now was looking bleak, he couldn¡¯t afford to fight, and his trusted knights were non disposable. He had already lost a good soldier. Losing some more to win the city back was no good. He believed in projecting superior power to crush the enemy, now he felt like he was on the same ground as the enemy. It doesn¡¯t matter if it is the Royal army or some private army, if fought with, would cause casualties on our side and thus was not a wise choice.


    If his knights had the armour and weapons that they had when he was in power, this small battle was nothing. But they had chosen to leave those heavy equipments for lighter cheaper, stuff for ease of travelling by reducing the load of their mounts.


    Letting out a sigh, he opened his mouth to order something to Amor, and that was when Yugimi ran into Yuuma¡¯s chamber kneeling in front of Yuuma.


    ¡°Please help me lord, the enemies are powerful, too powerful.¡± Yugimi could only watch the slaughter as it happened in the gate. He had seen the knight of Yuuma rushing forward only to get blown up by some arrows, he was scared of his life. There was no way the enemy would leave him alive, the only end he would have if the city fell is death, and death was the least of his concern. If it was the families¡¯ allies behind this attack, he was sure that he will be tortured for an eternity if they caught him.


    Yuuma walked out of the room, slowly, without replying anything. Yugimi was relieved, lord himself was about to go into battle, he was saved!


    After reaching the main corridor, Yuuma walked towards the back entrance, Amor following closely behind. After a few seconds, a knight joined them, then two, and the time they had reached the back entrance, the whole rank of experts were behind Yuuma. They looked like an army of skeletons, some in cloak, some in suits.


    Reaching the back gate and seeing the hwacha, the weapon that had killed one of his knight, Yuuma had a complicated feeling in his heart. If he had this weapon, his aims would be easier to accomplish. But there was no way but to destroy this now as they wanted to break out of here.


    Three men walked forward, The first man kicked down, a large boulder splitted earth and came out, levitating in the air. The second man drew fire glyphs all over the boulder, and with a final snap, the boulder was on fire. The third man kicked the stone, he was an earth mage and the stone buzzed towards the hwacha. exploding on impact and rockets flew all the place, like a misfired firework.


    The men that guarded the carriage saw this and ducked down to avoid the explosion. But still many fell prey to the explosion and rocks that flew up from the explosion like meteorites. A few of the men still had their composure and started shooting at the direction the fireball came from,


    While many others deserted the scene in fear.


    Yugimi who was in the back of all the experts heaved a sigh of relief, I was right in choosing to do as lord Yuuma told, he thought. But what Yuuma done next shattered all his hopes.


    Yuuma took out a whistle blew it, so did all the other experts. In a few seconds the elemental panthers that were on the stable and the giant raven that was in the woods nearby came to their masters.


    ¡°Thanks for your hospitality, Yugimi, have this as a reward.¡± Yuuma said this and tossed a blue spirit stone to Yugimi.


    ¡°Lo-Lord! Please don¡¯t !¡± Yugimi begged, he had no other choice, he didn¡¯t even look at the spirit stone, he was sure that with the power that Yuumi that had displayed now, he would be saved.


    Yuuma paid no heed to his words and climbed onto the raven.


    ¡°Are you crazy old man? You just saw what they could do right? Why should we provoke them, just let them go¡± A man who looked strong, yet timid said.


    ¡°What if they are not running away, but going to do an attack on the front? If we don¡¯t do this, they will be in danger! Just shoot !¡±An older man, probably in his fifties, yet was muscular and had a heroic look said to the young man.


    They were standing behind a carriage, and the carriage was nothing other than the hidden, canister loaded cannon. And these two men were now at a dilemma on whether to run away and save their lives or attack and die as heroes.

 Chapter 27 : Yuuma鈥檚 story

    After thinking for a while, the old man took a decision, to fire the cannon. But he didn¡¯t want to drag down the young man with him, and thus sent him away. The young man was reluctant to retreat at first. But after the old man yelled at him and made him promise to live to tell the heroic tale of the old man to the world, he had no choice but to run away.


    The man adjusted the cannon to the center of the experts, his main target was the giant raven at the front. He was no idiot and knew that the one riding that bird must be the leader and thus wanted to take him out. Lighting the fuse, he ran in the opposite direction of the cannon, to try and escape before the experts arrive.


    The fuse burned, and entered the gunpowder filled bag, the gunpowder caught fire and the explosion sent the canister in front of it, filled with grape-sized iron balls into the air. The thin canister couldn¡¯t handle the pressure and broke, sending out the iron balls flying into the crowd of experts. The iron balls spread in the air like a giant cone, the raven at its center.


    The balls were not as fast as the bullets from the gun, but they were not slow either, and just when the cone had traveled halfway through the street, the raven tilted its head. Sensing the incoming attack, covered itself and yuuma with its jet black feather-covered wings.


    The moment the wings were crossed was the moment the iron balls arrived, many of the balls had already fallen to the floor, but they skipped across the ground with the enormous momentum they had. Metal balls collided with the bodies of the experts that stood in the front row. The few normal thugs including Yugimi was in the front begging to Yuuma and were the main casualties. Many were as without an arm or leg, some had a hole in their chest. The floor was covered in blood and gore, Yugimi was seriously injured by a metal ball that had dug deep into his left leg.


    Some of the experts had serious injuries too. As the shot was from a distance and didn¡¯t have enough momentum to cause deaths in their ranks, The Knights had only a few injuries.


    Most of the metal balls had collided with the feather-covered wings of the raven, and many had been lodged in its feathers and flesh, It shook its wing and most metal balls fell off.


    Yuuma commanded the raven and the next moment, it was flying up high in the air.


    Yuuma was afraid of another attack, his demon raven, Tylar, could stand a few of these attacks without any problem, it had armored feathers. But a bird was still a bird, its strong point was not defense, and thus he decided to retreat immediately. He was hugging Tylar closely when they were flying up, he was thankful for what it had done. If he was injured by the attack, everything that he had done would go to waste. This made him remember when he got Tylar.


    ¡°When will you come back dad?¡±, a cute young boy, his hair, and eyes, golden in color, asked a well-built man who was in metal plate armor. The man had two long swords, one on each side of his waist, both almost touching the ground. He had a heroic air to him, he held his head high, like a true noble.


    ¡°As soon as we defeat the demons, Yuuma, Be a good boy, okay? ¡±


    The boy who looked like he was five years old, was trying hard to not cry, he was afraid something would happen to his dad. His fears were true, although he didn¡¯t know, none had returned from this portal,


    It was not that the man wanted to leave his son and go on this perilous mission, but it was the imperial order and he had the duty to protect the human world.


    The astrologers of both empires had visions when the portal first appeared, they saw what was inside the portal, demons! They looked like skeletons covered in skin, the astrologers had a vision of the demons savagely attacking spirit animals and doing weird rituals with their blood. And what scared them was that these spirit animals were top grade ones. Demons that can kill top tier demon beasts single-handedly, what kind of power was that? What would happen if they were to be let into the human world?


    A large army was led into the portal¡¯s position that year, and on arrival they found a demon standing outside the portal, he had its body surrounded by a skeleton, he wore a mask that made him look demonic.


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    The commander of the army ordered an attack and the demon went down without any fight. It was as if the demon was not expecting the attack.


    From that year onwards, once every three years, the astrologers get a vision and the portal opens for a few minutes on a random place, but even before the demons come out, a group of brave knights was sent in to prevent the demons from coming out.


    This was the third time the portal was opening, and the second batch of knights that was sent in. The last time from the knights that had entered the portal, no one returned. Yuuma didn¡¯t know this and only had the innocent wish that his father didn¡¯t leave him,


    ¡°Promise?¡±, Young Yuuma asked,


    ¡°Promise!¡± The man said, running his fingers through the hair of Yuuma


    27 knights, armed to the teeth, walked into the portal.


    There were many people who were related to these knights near the portal, many had tears in their eyes.


    Minutes passed, and the portal disappeared.


    Crying and wailing of the dear ones of the knights resounded in the air.


    A young boy stood there, still waiting for his dad.


    The crowd started to thin, in a few hours, there were only a handful more people left near the portal. Tired of standing, Yuuma, walked to the shade of the nearby tree and sat down, and fell asleep.


    When he was awake, no one was around. He guessed that they all might have had their relatives return. Yuuma waited there for an hour, then a day, he ate the fruits of a nearby tree when he was hungry, and drank spring water when he was thirsty, but still came back to the portal to wait.


    On the third day, the portal had a small spatial tear in it and an injured raven, two times the size of a normal raven came out of the tear.


    Seeing the tear open, Yuuma expected his dad¡¯s return, but what awaited him was only grief. It was just a bird. But on closer inspection, in its right leg, there was a ring, the ring that had a knight¡¯s symbol carved in it and beneath it, there was the name, it was Yuuma¡¯s dad¡¯s ring. The other leg had a parchment of paper tied to it.


    The next day, imperial soldiers arrived at the portal, looking for Yuuma. Yuuma¡¯s dad was one of the best knights of the empire and his the emperor wanted to gift his fief to his son. And soon realized that the Yuuma who had no family was somehow left behind at the location of the portal, and immediately sent a group to search for him.


    Yuuma adamantly refused to leave the portal without his dad and the soldiers had to drag along a young Yuuma, kicking the air and scratching and biting them. But they agreed to one of his wishes and let him have the raven and took it along with them.


    From that day onwards he treated that bird as his own brother and was really fond of it, later in his life, he realized that the ring was a final message from his father, although he was not sure what he meant. The parchment had weird runes that meant nothing in it.


    The portal never opened again.


    Later, he got a fief,


    His childhood was as of a pampered boy, getting everything he needs at a command, he didn''t value life, he was devoid of morals growing up. What else can you expect from a boy who had no one to control him or teach him good and bad things.


    he studied everything he can about the runes, as he wanted to find even a clue about what had happened to his father. And after tens of years of research, he found out some of the meanings of it. It had the secret of obtaining bloodlines from spirit animals!


    Exited, Yuuma treated this as the last gift from his father and experimented with the bloodlines. He wanted the power of those demons.


    He wanted to get power and make all of those sent his father into the portal pay!


    But whatever he did, he was not able to get rid of the poison from the blood of spirit animals and thus began his dark days. Experimenting with humans, injecting them with spirit animal blood. Finally, when he had an almost successful result, he injected himself with the spirit animal blood. He only got a bad fever and the result was that he became a dual element mage. But the situation changed with the next blood infusion.


    He became sick, his vitality was eaten away by the poison from the blood. He became what he is now, what that was inside the portal, a demon.

 Chapter 28 : After the battle

    Robert stood in atop the building, gazing in the direction that Yuuma had flown away to. Robert had seen what happened at the back gates of the castle and wished that he had moved a few more cannons to there. He expected the experts that were hit by the cannon would be enraged and retaliate, but they retreated quickly. Probably because they didn¡¯t know if there were more of these fire spitting weapons preparing to attack them.


    He climbed down the building and walked towards the castle, where the militiamen were celebrating their victory. He didn¡¯t forget to send a messenger to the Greyston to share this good news.


    Reaching the castle, there was two news waiting for him. The first was that they were able to capture Yugimi and his followers alive, the second was something disturbing, very disturbing. They had found a mass grave beside the castle, a large well that was filled with human bodies. There was a newly dug well besides it and a place where it was covered with fresh dirt. The guess of how many men had been buried there was in the range of thousands.


    Robert saw the scene and was filled with anger and anguish, these were innocent citizens, thousands of them, dead! He had killed people before, he had indirectly helped to kill men, but they were not civilians, they were men who signed up for it knowing the danger. Even in this world where the treaties like Geneva convention doesn¡¯t exist, civilians were left unharmed during wartimes. But here they were lying dead, in in a pit, massacred, treated like they were cattle.


    Robert didn¡¯t know them, he was not even from this world, but seeing this scene, he was angry. He couldn¡¯t save them, there was nothing he could do about what had happened, but he still felt responsible. If he had the power to not retreat, if he had the strength to stand head to head with those experts, this wouldn¡¯t have happened.


    He didn¡¯t shed any tears, he knew tears were meaningless. He still had the memory of Riley being tortured to death by that old bald man. And now he saw what will happen if that maniac was let to live any longer. He had already taken a pledge to exact revenge for Riley, but now he had one more reason to do it. To save these innocent people from that monster.


    The celebrations were still going on, the oppressed people of Goldfair city was throwing parties at every other street. Inviting heroes to their homes, gifting them flowers. The remaining members of the large families came to visit Robert to express their thanks and to see what their future holds. But was made to wait in the castle hall as Robert was somewhere else.


    Robert was down in the basement of the castle, the air reeked blood and a depressing aura was in the air. In a small cell of the castle prison that the Snake skull used to torture men, the leader of Snake skulls was sitting in a chair. Instead of the torturer''s role that he usually played, now he was the victim of the torture. Robert wanted to extract as much as information from him. Yugimi had already begged for his life and answered all of Robert¡¯s queries even before he was tortured. But Robert wanted him to suffer and thus arranged for someone to torture him.


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    ¡°Yuuma, so that is your name,¡± Robert said to himself.


    After understanding Yuuma¡¯s objective and how he was nearing success, Robert heaved a sigh. That madman already is powerful, if he gets more power what will happen?


    Robert also understood one thing, the method Yuuma was using was the same as what he had discovered. But without the knowledge for separating the magic cells from the blood, the foreign blood cells was causing a reaction in his body and thus making him lose his vitality. And this man Yuuma was not trying to remove the poison from the blood, instead, he was trying to absorb the vitality of other humans to increase his own.


    What if he perfects his method? Wouldn¡¯t he be able to use all the elements of magic? And his power level was already so high, what kind of power will he possess then?


    Robert left the management of the city and the future of the captives to manager Naoki as he was more knowledgeable about this world.


    Naoki was more than happy to take over the management of the city. This man truly loved scolding and swearing at people. This was the highest position of power that he had held yet and he was overjoyed. He also felt relieved that the city was now liberated from the Snake skulls.


    The next day Sophy arrived and took charge of the city, she was so happy that Robert was able to capture the city with only a couple of casualties. She knew that he would be able to capture the city, but had been expecting more casualties in the battle against the experts.


    She felt like shedding a tear of joy when she took over the city. This was the first time that she had gained true power. From the moment Her father¡¯s brother took over the clan, she was sidelined from any positions of power and even exiled to this city. Now she had someplace that was of herself.


    Robert hesitated to take all credit, he claimed it was all due to the valor of the militiamen and luck that he was able to complete the mission without much trouble.


    He described the battle in vivid detail to Sophy and Naoki, he was the one who had the perfect view of the whole picture and described in vivid detail how the battle had taken place. But as he was describing the part where the giant raven appeared and Yuuma escaped by flying away, Sophy and Naoki both frowned.


    Spirit birds were known for their agility, and accuracy of their attacks, but what they lack the most in is its defense. It had a reason, the birds, to be able to fly must have light bodies, and light bodies meant less armor to protect them. There was also the size of the raven, birds tend to be small in size, even the largest bird that Sophy had seen in the capital was unable to carry a human. Where and how Yuuma was able to get this bird? How was he able to find a way to increase his vitality by sucking it from others? The questions were numerous.

 Chapter 29 : Lord of Greyston

    Transferring of a town to another person was not much of a deal, these types of transactions always occurred in Lorvale. All Sophy had to do was to draft a transfer document and send it to the capital city. But this was just for the sake of paperwork, anyone can be the head of a town or a village if they had enough power to hold it. All they had to do was pay the tax to the royal family.


    The transfer of Goldfair city was a much harder process. It required the arrival of a member of royal family and bestowing the city upon its new owner. Sophy had already sent word to her clan and the royal family about the takeover of the city.


    Sophy was really happy about getting the control of the Goldfair city. She was sidelined by the new head of clan to this remote city which the clan didn¡¯t even control. But after meeting this man called Robert, she was able to make the stagnant weapon industry bloom and make some serious money. Her opinion on Robert got ten times better after he took over the city fighting against a group of hundred expert level magic users. With the limited number of men in the Black Dragon castle from the Goldfair and Greyston, she wouldn¡¯t even be able to fight against the mercenaries and thugs of the Snake skulls. Let alone standing head to head with the experts that were with Yuuma.


    She still had no idea about the history of Robert, and it didn¡¯t matter for her. He shared the secrets of the gunpowder with her, and that one thing alone was enough for the downfall of a city guarded by even experts. If these weapons were produced in large scale, it would be enough to change the outline of this continent.


    ¡°That bastard was so thick-skinned that he ain¡¯t even getting scratched by bullets,¡± Mike was describing how they shot down an expert with the hwacha and finished him off with snipers.


    He had already chugged down many glasses of wine and was in a really good mood. He had never had any adventures like this all his life and was enjoying this moment where everyone saw him as a hero.


    ¡°Hey, mike, let¡¯s go!¡±, Nenand was getting tired of listening to Mike¡¯s story of how they beat an expert. He had already listened to this story many times this day, each time Mike describing his epic deeds to a different audience inside this Tavern. People were queuing to buy a drink and hear stories from the heroes, and thus made for a good audience.


    Isidro was also lying on the table near mike, he had already got drunk from all the wine and was now passed out. Mike was nothing near to drunk and was chucking down more and more wine.


    Although everyone who participated in the battle had their own stories, they were not as splendid as the one which Mike had or the old man named Koert who fired a cannon into an army of experts had.


    Nenand was responsible for taking the central tower of the city and his mission couldn¡¯t have gone any better. They took out the guards who were guarding the tower without any resistance and taking the top of the tower didn¡¯t even require any of their strength. they just had to light a grenade and throw it up. And it doesn¡¯t matter how much you try to exaggerate this, it was almost impossible, especially when all the men from the other towers had the same story to tell.


    Robert walked into the tavern wearing a new dress which made him look nobler. Robert didn¡¯t want to look flashy or stand out, but Sophy had dragged him into the cloth shop, buying him an attire that made him look more like a Lord of town.


    ¡°Now you look noble!¡±


    She was happy about this new dress of Robert. Now if someone sees him, they will for sure think he has high origins. She did this for Roberts own good, she was sure that if he went back to Greyston like he was earlier, there will be people who will talk badly about him. Some might even won¡¯t accept him as the town lord.


    The militiamen and the snipers were all enjoying the drinks and food and hearing others stories. There were many who were already wasted like Isidro, some have got lucky with a woman and were now somewhere else. Most were enjoying the moment that they didn¡¯t see Robert walk in, or rather, they didn¡¯t immediately recognize him due to his noble attire. Robert always wore a simple dress and didn¡¯t stand out from the crowd. He walked into the crowd that was listening to Mike¡¯s story. The story finished and the crowd applauded, Finally, when the cheering has stopped, Robert was still clapping, slowly. Everyone¡¯s eyes fell upon him and many militiamen and the snipers like Mike recognized him and jumped up in respect


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    ¡°Everyone, for celebrating me becoming the lord of Greyston, the drinks are all on me tonight!¡±


    The crowd remained silent for another few seconds before breaking out into a cheer again. The lord of the town was there, throwing a party for them like they were equals. Usually, to celebrate occasions like this, lords would throw a banquet, but they were only for nobles and members of higher class families.


    Enjoying like this was a first time for Robert too, in his previous life, he had stayed away from things like going to parties and enjoying for doing his researches. But now was a time for celebration, he had taken his first step in increasing his sphere of influence in this world.


    After a few rounds of drinks, and most men were drunk, They set off to the Greyston town. Carriages


    Robert didn¡¯t forget to ransack some rare books from the large families¡¯ libraries to learn more about magic, spells and this world.


    Reaching Greyston the next morning, the news of Robert being the lord of Greyston spread quickly. People who had little knowledge about whom he was were not sure on what to think about this change.


    Robert arranged for the families of the men who died in the battle to get an amount of money every month as pension. This order made many men in the finance department of the Greyston to frown but lit up the faces of the army men. This meant that if they died in a battle for their lord, their families would be safe for life.


    Robert decided to move out from the Black Dragon store into a large house. He didn¡¯t want to do his secretive experiments under the watchful eyes of the Black Dragon clan from now on. He trusted them, but there were things that were best kept to himself, like the method of how to get other elemental affinities.


    Getting into his new home, it that looked old and was sparsely furnished, and was easy to see that this place was hastily prepared. The militiamen all stood on the large ground that was behind the house. The reason Robert decided to live in this older house was the proximity to this large ground. He wanted to have a large open space for addressing the soldiers as well as test his new weapons and magic.


    Robert now had a few true soldiers under him, Sophy gave him a few of her guards to train his men. After all, these men that Robert had was only hunters and gatherers and although had gone through combat, were not true soldiers.


    Walking into the grounds, Robert understood how chaotic was these men from the way they stood. They were only able to fight and win in the battle in Goldfair city as it was a blitz attack. furthermore, their every action was designed step by step and all they had to do was just to follow them.


    But if they were head to head with an army in a battlefield where the other side had a shield, their current guns wouldn¡¯t help them and would be crushed in the melee fight.


    Robert wanted to increase both his personal power to the level of at least an expert and turn this militia into an elite army. And the snipers as a special unit.


    He already had a general idea formed in his mind on the command structure of the army. He decided to mimic the military structure of his previous world.


    Four men and a corporal form a fireteam. A sergeant with four fireteams forms a squad. Four squads form a platoon. Four platoons form a company, led by a captain.


    He didn¡¯t need to think up higher structures for now as there were only less than a hundred men in his army.


    He also had the idea for a separate branch for the artillery including the cannons and hwacha. But he wanted to replace the cannons using something that was easier to transport or had a higher range. like rocket artillery that was a larger form of the hwacha and had tens of kilometers in range.


    But increasing his personal power was also important. He was yet to break through the bottleneck of level 9 apprentice. And his unique cultivation method was nowhere near success.

 Chapter 30 : Troublemaker

    A few days had passed after Robert became the Lord of Greyston.


    Robert rode his horse slowly through outskirts of the Greyston. He had dressed up in normal linen clothing and was riding towards the mines that supplied ores to the Greyston town. He wanted to see how these mines operate, and if possible, increase the production of these mines.


    Reaching a mine that seemed to be an iron mine, Robert was amazed by the workflow and how the ore was taken up from the depth of mine and then transported. There were a few oxen, pulling a log, which had a large rope attached to it. The rope was going into the depths of the mine. And as the oxen moved forward, the rope was pulled up from the mine, there were some hooks on the rope which was connected to the log. After the oxen reached the end of the field, the hook was attached to an anchor and the oxen were moved back to the initial position to connect to another hook.


    Seeing this, Robert nodded in appreciation. The man who designed this was very good. Robert had the thoughts of introducing steam engine to the world, but after seeing this efficient mechanism, he thought that even if he belated the invention of steam engine, it wouldn¡¯t do any harm to the efficiency of production.


    But soon, seeing some men walk out of the mine in dirty clothes and pickaxe in their back, Robert got an idea of what they needed the most.


    A jackhammer! Having a steam-powered jackhammer could drastically improve the production compared to these men digging up ores with a pickaxe. And the good thing about creating a jackhammer was that he didn¡¯t need to convert the up and down motion of the piston in a piston to rotational motion. He could directly use the linear motion to power the jackhammer.


    But the problem was maneuvering the jackhammer, his idea required either a flexible hose to carry the steam or movable boiler. Robert immediately disposed of the second idea, putting in a boiler inside the mine was a bad idea. He was not sure if there were any inflammable gases inside. And flame might suck up all the oxygen, suffocating the workers.


    Wait, inflammable gases! Robert got an idea! He could make an internal combustion engine if he had coal gas or any other inflammable gas. What he lacked was a lathe! Robert decided to work on one soon after he reached his home.


    Unknown to Robert who was thinking of a way to increase production of the mine, a trouble had arrived on the town of Greyston.


    Riding back into the town, Robert noticed something was off. The guards that were in the back gates of the town was looking furious, their cheeks looked red like they were slapped.


    Did these guys get into a fight? Robert had high regards of these men as they performed extraordinarily in the battle of Goldfair.


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    ¡°What happen?¡± Robert asked them.


    ¡°Lo- Lord must seek justice for us.¡±, the men were on the verge of tears.


    These men were not the kind who will stand still and get slapped. They were either overpowered or outranked.


    Getting overpowered? Robert didn¡¯t think so. These guys, although were mere guards, put their heart in this job, and wouldn¡¯t go down without a fight against enemies.So this was not done by enemies, but by friends? Who would go around slapping guards?


    Robert decided to hear them out.


    Hearing the guards explained how the army from the capital arrived at the city gates and laughed at these guards for carrying something like metal rod instead of a sword. And the Black Dragon clan¡¯s Hristo slapped them for losing his face among his peers.


    Who the hell is this guy Hristo? And who does he think he is to come into my town and slap my guards?


    Robert was furious, he stormed off into the town, looking for this guy Hristo. Robert didn¡¯t care who he was, Robert had always thought of Black Dragon clan as friends and now someone from there just made his guards look like idiots.


    Walking into the town, what he saw was a path of destruction leading to the Black Dragon store in the center of the town. Many people, recognizing Robert, plead to him saying words similar to the guards.


    ¡°Lord, those hooligans broke all my wares because I didn¡¯t display a black dragon flag...¡±


    ¡°They destroyed the precious sculpture that took me a week to create, please help us, Lord...¡±


    A young girl was sitting in the middle of the street, her cheeks red, tears flowing from her eyes.


    She held her head down, and there was a pool of tears beneath it.


    A man was near her, trying to calm her down, many people were around her.


    ¡°What happen?¡± Robert repeated the same question he had asked numerous times now.


    Seeing the crying girl, he was really angered. If this too was done by that guy Hristo, there was no way he¡¯s getting away with it. It doesn¡¯t matter if he is from the black dragon clan or even a black dragon himself. Thinking he can do anything to anyone, this guy needs to be taught a lesson.


    The man beside her explained how the man called Hristo tried to take her with him to the Black Dragon store to ¡®relieve his urges¡¯ and when she resisted, tried to drag her with him. It was only because the heir of another large clan came through that way at that time that Hristo let her off.


    This guy! What is he a tornado? Leaving behind a trail of trouble. Who the hell does he think he is?


    And even trying to rape a girl and not being secretive about it? Robert had a feeling that this guy was certainly not simple. His status, if Robert had to guess, would be no less than that of Sophy in the black dragon clan.


    Robert rode off quickly towards the Black Dragon store.

 Chapter 31 : Taking out trash

    On his way, he asked someone whom this Hristo really was and understood his background. So he was the son of Luca! This meant one thing, he couldn¡¯t touch him. Or he would have to face the wrath of the whole Black Dragon clan.


    As he was nearing the Black Dragon store, Robert realized another thing. He was blinded by all his subjects¡¯ pleas that he forgot to see whether he was really able to help them in this situation.


    ¡°Damn! I would have thrown down the gauntlet blinded by all these cheerings¡±


    Robert took a deep breath and thought how he can manage the situation without actually confronting the army of Black Dragon directly. He truly didn¡¯t possess any weapons that could actually induce fear without lethality.


    Well, Goldfair was out of danger now and these soldiers of Black Dragon were not needed here. Also, the medicine in this world can treat almost any wounds unless it¡¯s lethal. A plan started to form in Robert¡¯s head. He was going to exact revenge for his people. His lips curved into an evil grin.


    Sending out a man to call Isidro and some other snipers on duty, Robert positioned them on some far away buildings that had a line of sight to the Goldfair store. They had one order, to shoot to not kill. Robert didn¡¯t want to kill someone unless it was absolutely necessary and this situation didn¡¯t require someone paying with their life.


    Isidro was not sure what Robert meant when he ordered them to shoot non lethally, but after Robert explained the targets, feet and arms, Isidro kind of understood. He had to intentionally miss all the vital organs. Damn, this was harder than taking a clear shot on a battlefield.


    But Isidro liked challenges. And this was one of those occasions where you could really shine. Cracking his knuckles and neck, he took his rifle and ammo bag and looked for a good spot to hunt!


    A few minutes later, the stage was set and the show was ready to begin.


    An army of men led by a man who looked like he was in his thirties, had a smug look on his face, came out of the entrance of the store of Black Dragon store.


    Robert was standing in the front yard of the store, alone, like a cowboy sheriff standing ready to ward off bandits in movies. He could even hear the background music playing in his head.


    ¡°I will give you three minutes to get the hell out of my town ye filthy bastard!¡±, Robert was feeling badass and issued an order.


    He was really enjoying this feeling of having a town for his own and being the police, and the court of that town. In his previous life, he couldn¡¯t even have imagined being a hero or doing something like standing against an army alone. But he was doing it now.


    Many of the men who were behind Hristo broke into a laughter hearing what Robert said. Hristo himself was amused by this strange man who was saying strange things. What does he think he is? His town? Anyway, Hristo was looking for someone to vent his anger and was more than happy to do so on this man.


    ¡°Your town? This is Black Dragon¡¯s town, and I am the heir of Black Dragon clan, who are you to even stand in front of me?¡±


    There were many people gathered around to see what was happening and Hristo wanted to project himself as a righteous person in front of them when beating up this guy, thus wanted a reason to do so.


    ¡°Black Dragon¡¯s Sophy has transferred this town to me, and I am asking you to kindly get off my town, or face the consequences.¡±


    Robert was doing the same as Hristo, he didn¡¯t want to appear as if he didn¡¯t give the opposition a chance to surrender, and thus repeatedly asked them to get out of the town.


    ¡°Sophy?¡±


    Frowning, Hristo continued


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    ¡°You are with her?¡±


    Hristo didn¡¯t want to wait any longer, the name Sophy was something he hated to the core. It was only because of her that his father was not yet able to get full control over the clan. If she hadn¡¯t somehow taken back Goldfair, Luca would have gotten a good reason for making her suffer even more. Although it was not her fault that Goldfair was fallen, Luca could easily bend the truths and put her in a bad situation.


    ¡°I can¡¯t yet do anything to her, but there is nothing holding me back from harming her friends¡±


    Hristo said, smiling evilly.


    He gestured a man behind him to go forward.


    This man who had just been summoned, walked forward, he was looking forward to beating Robert.


    As he was walking towards Robert, Robert raised his right hand and snapped his fingers. And the moment he snapped his fingers, the man who was walking forward suddenly fell down, he was rolling on the ground with pain, his hands cupping a wound in his feet.


    The smile on everyone from the Hristo¡¯s side faded.


    Nobody on their side had any idea of what had just happened. One moment Their comrade was walking towards their enemy, the next, he was rolling in the ground screaming.


    The one smiling now was Robert. He pointed to the gate of the town to Hristo with his hand.


    Just as Hristo was about to order something to his men, Robert raised his hand and showed a thumbs up sign. Five men from the ranks of Hristo was suddenly on the ground,


    Hristo looked at Robert stunned, Robert grinned ear to ear to Hristo. In his mind, he was telling ¡°yep it¡¯s all me!¡±


    But outside, he said


    ¡°If I wanted, those six men would have been dead now! You still have one minute to get out of my town before I put a hole in your head¡±


    Hristo still wanted to send out all his men to get this bastard in front of him killed. But a man, older in age who was beside Hristo stopped him and whispered something in his ear.


    Hristo gave a furious look to Robert before stomping off towards the town gates.


    The army of men followed suit, they took their comrades who were lying on the ground in pain with them too.


    The men who had gathered around to see what was happening all gave a thunderous applause to Robert. Those who had doubts about his capabilities earlier became his supporter due to this incident.


    What Robert was thinking was different though. He had to go head to head against Luca either now or later for Sophy, doing this now, he got respect from his people as a bonus too. He didn¡¯t worry too much about how he was going to fight Luca, there was still time for that. Luca wouldn¡¯t yet make a move against Sophy.


    Although he couldn''t do anything physically to this trash Hristo, he had left a mental note for him by shooting down 6 of his men in front of him. The note clearly said, "Don''t mess with me and my people!"


    Robert was not the guy who didn''t like to kill from before, his experience has shown him to not be merciful to enemies. But if he was to kill Hristo now, he would be infuriating an army of elite soldiers that was waiting for a few miles off the Greyston. And thus he had to gnash his teeth and let Hristo off for now.


    If he had killed Hristo with a sniper without anyone knowing, it wouldn''t do him any good. He wanted to show the people of Greyston that he would be there to watch their back. He wanted to make this place his headquarters for the future operations and needed some people that actually followed him. If he was to take over a city with his power, it would just make him another brute overlord who only uses the mass as a tool for his own rising. But making a small town grow into a city, he could build up a place that was absolutely under his control.

 Chapter 32 : Edwyn

    Was Robert a fool to let off this hooligan? The answer was obviously not. If he had acted rashly and killed off even one of Hristo¡¯s followers, the scenario would have been entirely different. The Royal army and other clan''s armies were here near the Greyston town. Would they just stand as spectators if one of their own was attacked?


    Edwyn was hearing what had happened in the Greyston town. He and the other clans had already left Greyston to go to Goldfair, but Hristo stayed behind. Hearing the incidents that happened from a soldier who was still at Greyston, Edwyn sighed.


    Hristo had lived a normal life, not much different than that of a normal clan member of Black Dragon till a few months ago. After Lucio, the clan leader fell, Luca took over the clan and that gave Hristo high position in the clan. Like someone who had just gotten rich, Hristo, who had been someone without power, on getting power started to abuse it.


    ¡°Is anyone dead?¡± Edwyn asked the soldier.


    Edwyn was sure that the incident at Greyston was Hristo¡¯s fault. That hooligan cannot stop seeking trouble wherever he goes. And what happened was in no way related to the army, as it was a personal matter. But if someone from the army was dead, that was another matter. Edwyn, as the commander of this army, and as a representative of the royal family couldn¡¯t stand still if one of his subordinates were attacked while on a mission.


    ¡°No your highness, 6 men are injured, but everyone will live.¡± The soldier that reported the incident to Edwyn replied.


    ¡°Although Hristo is on our side, so is the city lord of Greyston, he is also Lorvale¡¯s subject. It would be best if we let this slide for this one time.¡±


    A city lord meant that he was the city guard as well as a judge in a town. Edwyn, who had commanded over armies and managed many cities could see the thoughts of Robert and decided to do nothing.


    The army marched forwards, towards the city of Goldfair. After a while, Hristo had also joined the army, his face had lost its smug look and was an ugly sight to behold. He didn¡¯t complain to Edwyn, he couldn¡¯t accept to ask for help, or seem weak in front of the other clans. Hristo had decided to manage this matter of his own, Robert, you just wait until I reach the clan.


    Hristo and his army had no idea how they were beaten black and blue by an unarmed city lord. They had disposed of the idea of archers, as there were no arrows. Even the elite hidden weapons wouldn¡¯t be able to do this much damage.


    The army dispatched from the capital, a thousand men cavalry, arrived at the gates of Goldfair city. Sophy dressed in a black formal gown, was at the city gates, waiting for the army to arrive. Seeing cavalry arrive, she rode her white horse to the front of the army and nodded at Edwyn with a smile.


    ¡°Long time no see, Sophy, how is your father?¡± Edwyn asked Sophy, smiling.


    Although Edwyn held his head high, he was in no way arrogant. And when he asked Sophy about her father¡¯s health, it seemed as if he asked it really out of concern and not just as a formality.


    ¡°No changes Edwyn, thanks for your concern,¡± Sophy said to Edwyn.


    Edwyn was one of Sophy¡¯s peers from the capital, both of them were of similar in age and thus went to the same school and college. Edwyn was the second prince of the country of Lorvale, Although he was from the royal family, he didn¡¯t care much about being the next king and thus was loved by almost everyone. Usually, when there were three sons of a king, there would ensure a competition for the crown, but Edwyn had conceded his commendation for the crown without even giving a fight. But not contending for crown didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t have interest in power. What Edwyn hated was managing stuff, but he loved leading an army to fight off hordes of spirit animals and things like that. Instead of sitting in the comfortable throne of the castle, looking down upon the whole kingdom and giving decrees. He liked to be in the forefront, touching people''s lives.


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    The army marched through the city towards the town hall. Edwin was listening to Sophy narrate the battle of Goldfair. She didn¡¯t hide any information on Robert or his inventions as she had to justify the reason for giving the town of Greyston to Robert.


    Edwin was listening carefully to the story,


    Hristo was frowning at Sophy all this time. He had guessed that there was someone that helped sophy recapture the city. And he wanted to rope in this expert to his father¡¯s faction if possible. But he didn¡¯t think it was that youth that he went face to face against earlier that helped Sophy win a battle when the opposing side had a hundred experts.


    He only had a single order from his father, it was to humiliate Sophy in front of .the royal army pointing at her inability to even hold on to a single city and thus making her position in the clan even less prominent. But on the way here, they had met a messenger that delivered the message that Goldfair city was taken back by Sophy and was now under Black Dragon clan. This had left him furious, but he couldn¡¯t do anything. There were a lot of experts from the Black Dragon clan that supported Sophy¡¯s father and thus supporting Sophy. He had to tread carefully about this matter.


    Sophy had arranged a banquet for the army to remove their tiredness from the long journey and to celebrate Black Dragon clan taking over the city. Edwin allowed the soldiers to relax, he himself didn¡¯t partake in the banquet as to remain neutral among the clans. A clan taking over a city was no big deal, it happened all the time. And the war between the clans of a city was normal too. The royal family remained the major power of Lorvale and kept those battles and internal competitions to a limit. It was like the central pillar of a hall with five pillars.


    The banquet was going on in the central hall of Goldfair city, many soldiers were outside the central hall, as it was unable to keep all of them inside.


    Sophy was standing on the top floor¡¯s balcony, overseeing the banquet when Edwyn silently walked behind her and whispered in her ear


    ¡°So¡­ what do you think of this guy Robert?¡±


    Sophy who was enjoying her view didn¡¯t expect someone sneaking up on her and almost jumped in scare. Turning around and seeing Edwyn, she sighed.


    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you¡± Sophy smiled.


    ¡°He¡¯s cute, also kinda weird, I like that though.¡± Sophy could feel the warm breath of Edwyn touching her face, cold from the night winds.


    Sophy and Edwyn were peers, that was just that, or so thought everyone. But the fact that Sophy and Edwyn were in love was known to none besides them. It was not that Sophy didn¡¯t have a high enough status to marry a prince, the problem was that this prince was already engaged to the princess of the nearby kingdom of SilverCaslte at birth. Him taking up another woman as the wife would breach the agreement between these nation and could even lead to a war between Lorvale and Silver Castle.


    ¡°Oh! Even cuter than me?¡± Edwyn showed a sad face.


    ¡°No one is cuter than you, silly...¡± Sophy gave in, she really couldn¡¯t take the innocent face this guy had just shown her.


    Her eyes were locked on his eyes, she pulled him closer, embracing him. Her head tilted a bit, Her lips locked with his. She let go of herself, yielding totally to him.


    Yuuma was still staring at the booklet of parchments in front of him. It was what he had obtained from the hands of the raven when he was a boy, it was written in some language that wasn¡¯t even remotely reminiscent of the language of the Eastly continent. There were some illustrations and that was how Yuuma was able to deduce the method of gaining other bloodlines.


    Yuuma was now looking at the next part of that booklet. There were many illustrations here too, but he couldn¡¯t understand much. There were images of ladders, there were images of blobs if only he could decode the language.


    ¡°Seek some scholars for me, I need this translated.¡±


    Yuuma wanted to keep this booklet a secret, but he had no choices now.

 Chapter 33 : Researching magic

    An ox-drawn cart arrived at the residence of the new city lord. The cart had only a single seat for someone to sit and was modified to carry ores. Although empty, the storage area of the cart showed its age and usage from the numerous etches and scratches. A short man, in his fifties and his body muscular, jumped down from the cart. He walked into the house, and it was evident from the way he walked that one of his had a limp. He wore a tunic that was old and tattered at places.He greeted the guards at the doors and walked into the house.


    Robert was having his breakfast when this man, Tenney, arrived. Robert was expecting him and invited him to have breakfast. Tenney had invented the oxen mechanism as he was unable to carry heavy loads of ores to outside the mines. His limp had lead to an invention!


    Robert slowly took bites of the juicy steak and sipped a little wine and enjoyed the delicacies as they spread in his palette. Although he was well fed in the Goldfair city, it was not as good as the food made by the best cook of Greyston. Robert had taken the decision of enjoying this second life of his to its fullest and thus wanted to have the best food whenever he can.


    Tenney, the short man was, instead of enjoying the taste of the meat and wine, munching mouthful of steak and chugging down wine from a large mug. He ate the best food that this town had to offer like it was his regular meal.


    ¡°¡®Tis pretty good!¡± Tenney swallowed a mouthful and said before drinking some wine.


    Robert only smiled and took a sip of the wine. He was trying hard to not laugh. It was not because Robert thought of him as uncultured, but because he was not expecting someone like this when he invited an inventor to a meal.


    ¡°So why¡¯d ya call me? I hope ya not going to increase the taxes or something.¡±


    Tenney was the owner of the iron mine that Robert had seen the oxen mechanism for drawing out the ore from the depths, and asking around Robert had found out that this man designed that mechanism himself. And thus Robert wanted to see him.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I only have plans to reduce the taxes...I wanted to see you to know more about the mines¡± Robert said.


    ¡°Whatya wanna know? ¡±


    Tenney had a doubtful expression on his face, why would a city lord want to know about mines and their working? All these lords had to do was to collect the taxes and spend their days peacefully inside their mansions.


    Robert queried and tried to get an understanding of the mines, but he was given some pieces of information that were different from what he had expected. In the mine that he had seen that day, there were only five workers instead of the hundreds that he had expected. And realized that he was not on earth. These earth element magus were able to mine out tons of rocks a day to find the ores inside. The pickaxe was only used to remove some rocks that they were unable to move with magic.


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    There was no reason for him to make his ¡°steam-powered jackhammer¡± now.


    Robert asked about the ones that they mined and other things about the mines. There were many rare ores that they mined from the mine, like silver iron. Robert was not sure what those things were without seeing and experimenting with them.


    There was one piece of news that Tenney said as a bad thing that Robert was happy to hear. There were explosive gases inside the mine. This was the one reason fire was not allowed anywhere near the mine.


    Explosive gases! Robert didn¡¯t know which gases were these but was sure that they were the firedamp that was found in coal mines in his previous world. If he could extract these gases somehow, he could use them to power his industrial machines that he was going to create.


    Robert tasked Tenney with the mission of introducing his oxen mechanism in every mine that was in the vicinity of Greyston town. He also instructed him to collect the unidentified ores that they obtained from the mine and deliver them to his home.


    Robert walked into the laboratory that he had set up in his home. Inside were many instruments and papers with runes carved in it. Robert had understood the basic properties of the magic energy of this world. They behaved in the same manner as electricity. When you connect a dark stone, which sucked the magic energy into it, and a spirit stone, that had energy in it with a trail of blood that was obtained from spirit animals, the magic energy flowed from the spirit stone to the dark stone. It worked just like a battery!


    Robert was now experimenting with the magic power in anticipation of creating a motor with it. The magic energy has shown electromotive tendencies and those were utilized in some runes made small movements on the application of this energy.


    Robert sat on a stool, surrounded by different apparatuses, his thoughts were on how he can convert the magical energy into mechanical energy.


    After thinking for a long time, he facepalmed.


    Converting magical energy to mechanical energy, wasn¡¯t that the same thing that the magical cannons did? Instead of using that energy to propel the cannonball, he could simply create a paddlewheel using the reflector that was in the cannon and use the stream of spirit energy to move objects!


    But thinking more about it, Robert shook his head. Wasn¡¯t doing what he just thought of just like making a rocket fly with pressurized gasoline instead of actually lighting the gasoline and using the flames and hot gases to propel the rocket? The method people used in this world to do things were too wasteful.


    He had to find more about this magical energy. There was also this property of spirit animal blood to conduct magical power, does it mean that there is an element that conducts magic power like the power lines in the Earth?


    Robert scratched his head as he was coming up with more and more questions than answers.

 Chapter 34 : Flamethrower and Lathe

    Robert was trying to improve the power of the pyramid-like glyph that Darrell had invented to make it more useful. Useful as in deadly. He found that there were many limiting factors that reduced the power of the glyph. One of it was the capacity of the spirit animal blood to carry magical power. The other one was the dissipation of power from the spirit stone to the surroundings.


    Robert had thought up many methods to overcome these problems, to increase the magic capacity of the blood, he could use the same method that he used to separate the magic cells from the spirit animal blood. He could centrifuge the blood and increase the concentration of magic cells, thus increasing the magic conductivity.


    The other method that he had was to find the element that helped the magic cells to carry magic power. Robert didn¡¯t know if it was an element that was unique to this planet or maybe a compound. But if he could get his hands on it, he can have the most magical conductivity.


    It was rather easy to decrease the magic energy dissipation. All he had to do was to cover the opening of the spirit stone with the magic reflecting material. It would effectively seal the energy inside like a thermos flask preserving heat inside.


    Taking a vial of magic cells that he had separated from the spirit animal blood, Robert drew the circuit that was necessary for powering the pyramid glyph. He placed a white spirit stone, core bright with energy, into its slot in the circuit. Turning the switch on, Robert was only expecting a flame that was a few times larger than the original one. Instead, what happened was the flame that was only an inch in height earlier had grown into a meter tall flame. The moment the flame appeared, it consumed the paper the circuit was drawn on. Robert was standing at a safe distance as he always expected danger in whatever experiments he did.


    Seeing this, Robert¡¯s mouth curved into a smile. He had created a flamethrower! He guessed that the flame will be two times as large after he completes the sealing mechanism to conserve energy.


    But instead of instantly implementing this into a weapon, Robert¡¯s thought was on how he can use this to make a gun. He knew that this flame was a pure flame, there were no hot gases that formed from the pyramid glyph. So using this flame directly to propel a bullet was out of the question. But Robert always found a way to do things, even if it was not straightforward.


    Taking a gun, he removed the trigger mechanism. Then he took a cartridge and removed the gunpowder from it. He put in a miniature pyramid glyph in the position of the firing pin and connected it to the circuit. Inside the cartridge, he put in some wine that he had. He moved away and switched the circuit on. The bullet flew from the gun with a pop and didn¡¯t go much distance.


    His experiment had failed. Robert thought that alcohol was inflammable and volatile, but what he didn¡¯t know was that liquid alcohol didn¡¯t catch fire, it was the fumes that was inflammable. There was also the matter of low alcohol content in the wine and the absence of any oxidizers in the cartridge. Robert still had many hurdles to overcome in order to create a working gun using this fire glyph.


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    Robert decided to put away the work on the new gun using magic alone, he still had to recreate many things from his past life.


    ¡°You sure you can do it alone?¡± Hristo was not going to underestimate his opponent this time. He knew how Robert had helped Sophy to win a battle when the other side had a hundred experts.


    ¡°Although I am only an expert level 3, don¡¯t forget that I have never lost a duel with anyone less than level 7 expert cultivation!¡±


    Torkel was not exaggerating, he had fought with men way above his level to a standstill in the battle arena in the capital city of Lorvale. This was why he was sent to guard Hristo in this dangerous mission of taking back Goldfair city.


    Luca cared very much about his only son and didn¡¯t even want a scratch on him. If he didn¡¯t need with Sophy and replace her to take over the city, He wouldn¡¯t even have let Hristo take on this mission.


    ¡°Be sure to be back by tomorrow morning¡± Hristo gave a final warning to Torkel. Hristo was sure that Torkel would be able to complete this mission without much difficulty as he knew Robert was only an apprentice level magic user. And this was not even a head-on match, all Torkel had to do was to sneak into Robert¡¯s house and kill him without making a ruckus. Torkel was no assassin, but he had done his share of stealth missions and although he was not the best at it, from the selection of hundred soldiers that Hristo had, he was the best.


    Taking off his heavy metal plate armors, Torkel suited himself in a light, black clothing that made him look like a ninja. He left his broadsword behind for a light but deadly dagger.


    Mounting atop a dark brown horse, he moved like a shadow towards the general direction of Greyston.


    Robert was now building a lathe. He had only a general idea about metal workings and only knew that lathe rotated the materials in it, thus making shaping them possible. He didn¡¯t have to do much designing as he had already created the centrifuge. All he had to do was to reduce the gear ratio and impart some torque to the rotation motion of things.


    Sounds of metalworking could be heard that whole day from the laboratory of Robert as he melted, welded, and shaped the metal into the general shape of a lathe that he had seen in his previous life.


    Finally, he assembled the many pieces of equipment together to form a lathe that was fixed on top of a table. Rotating the handle, he was joyous as the metal that he had placed on the lathe rotated.


    He was now able to create the intricate things that he needed to make for building the industrial equipment. Be it a steam engine or an internal combustion engine.

 Chapter 35 : Attack

    It was almost midnight.Torkel got off his horse and walked towards Robert¡¯s house. There were two men guarding the gates of the rather large house. Torkel pointed his fingers to one of the guards and an ice shard, the size of a small dagger shot out from his finger. The guard that the attack was aimed at felt something in his neck and touching his neck to check what it was, his hands turned bloody from the blood that was pouring out of his Jugular vein.


    Although they were not looking at each other, the guards were in a small conversation and hearing that his comrade had suddenly gone silent, the guard who was still standing turned to look, and this was the same moment his neck was pierced by the ice shard.


    ¡°Too easy¡±


    Torkel walked in through the wide-open door into the corridor that was lit by a dim orb. As he walked through the central corridor, he opened and looked at each of the room silently to find Robert. He was obvious of Robert¡¯s location as there was only a single room that had lights on, but didn¡¯t want to take the risk. After reaching the room that still had lights on, he prepared two ice shards, one in each hand and kicked the locked door open. Torkel didn¡¯t know if the door was locked or not but wanted it open either way and thus put some force into it while preparing to not fall down if the door was not locked.


    ¡°Crack¡±


    Stabilising himself after the door cracked open, Torkel quickly scanned the room to find Robert. But instead of a town lord that was sleeping in the bed, what awaited him was a shell made of earth. It had no entrance and was surrounding what must be the bed of this bedroom.


    From the moment he pissed off Hristo, Robert always looked out for danger, he would always carry his gun with him and when he went to sleep, he practiced his earth magic to create a small fortress around his bed. This was so that if someone got into the house, he would still have at least a few moments before he got attacked.


    Robert had a part of this earthen guard connected to himself and was able to sense vibrations outside of it even when he was asleep.


    But when Torkel broke open the door, Robert was still not asleep. He was reading a book had information about the agriculture and farms of Greyston. Hearing the sound, Robert was sure this was in no way a friend. What he had been expecting has come.


    Robert immediately took the gun that was near him. He had five shots, and the enemy still unknown.


    Robert had a plan that he prepared for a situation like this. There was only a single way to get out of this earthen castle without exposing himself to the enemy. He didn¡¯t know the position of the enemy and the only offensive choice was to attack in all direction. Robert didn¡¯t believe in defending his position, his stance was that ¡°offense is the best defense¡± This also had taken into consideration that the enemy could be a fire mage and might create an inferno out of this earthen shell.


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    Touching the shell Robert resonated the earth, making it vibrate and finally cracking and forming a thousand stones and as he was expecting this to happen, the moment the shell broke into pieces, he sent out a wave of magical energy making the shell shards flying outwards towards every direction in the room.


    Although this was nothing deadly, or even able to make an injury on an expert, Torkel was taken aback for a split second. This was all that Robert needed. He aimed the gun at Torkel and fired all five rounds simultaneously. The bullet all buzzed through the air and found its target at different parts of Torkel¡¯s chest. Although the gun was rifled and had a good muzzle velocity, none of the bullets were able to penetrate more than a few inches into Torkel¡¯s body.


    Torkel felt like he had been hit with a sledgehammer on the chest. But he was a soldier who had seen a thousand battles. He knew that if he gave the enemy even a second, his state would be dire. He immediately sent out the two ice shards that he had already prepared towards Robert.


    Robert had dropped his gun the moment it was out of ammo and had drawn two glyphs on his hands, fire, and stone. His hand was hard as a rock and lit up ablaze, seeing that the enemy had some ranged magic prepared, Robert prepared to receive the attack and put up a guard like a boxer to guard his vitals.


    The shards were aimed at Robert¡¯s neck but hit on his hands instead. Both of the shards hit his hands, the shards shattered as it hit the rock hand, and gave off a puff of steam as it was set ablaze by the fire that was raging in Robert¡¯s hands.


    Robert kicked the ground levitating a few boulders and shot them towards Torkel. But being the soldier he was, his physique was enough to stop the boulders that lacked any momentum.


    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡±


    Torkel asked Robert. He was surely feeling confident. From everything that Robert had done, only the five shots from the weapon in his hand were able to injure him. Although he didn¡¯t understand how Robert could set his hands on fire when he was clearly an earth element mage, this gimmick was nothing to even notice. He was sure that Robert didn¡¯t have any more of those weapons in his hand. His low-level magic spell wasn¡¯t even able to hurt Torkel.


    Robert was almost out of options.


    Almost.

 Chapter 36 : Ember Blood attack

    Robert continuously attacked with boulders, but it didn¡¯t even scratch Torkel.


    ¡°Prepare to die!¡± Torkel kicked the ground saying this. A small vine of started growing from his feet and it quickly grew, towards Robert.


    ¡°Not good!¡± Robert knew what this was, ¡°ice spike¡± the ice vine will creep to the enemy and impale them with an ice spike.


    Robert raised his leg and kicked with all his might, a small ledge of earthen wall rose in front of him, the ice vine which was creeping through the ground towards Robert hit on this wall and a meter tall ice spike destroyed the wall.


    Although earth magic was the best for defense, the power level difference between the two users now was very high. One was an apprentice, level nine user, when the foe was a level 3 expert! Torkel was two whole realm above Robert.


    That attack almost reached Robert, if it had moved a few more feet forward, he would surely be a corpse by now!


    before he could think, Robert saw another ice spike attack coming towards him. He immediately did the same thing as before. This time a few more feet towards Robert, another stone wall rose. And the moment it formed it was destroyed by another ice spike.


    Two more feet and the spike would have impaled Robert.


    ¡°This cannot continue!¡± Robert was sure that if the fight continued for long, he would be crushed by his opponent. Robert pondered his options and took a decision. To use the most powerful attack that he could do.


    The attack that will burn his blood. The magic that was described on the last page of every golden grimoire, Ember blood attack.


    The basis of this attack was still a mystery to scholars, it brought forward a power by burning one¡¯s magical power. And once it was used, magic power and wouldn''t be able to use magic for a long time. Thus the use of this magic was only done by someone as their final attempt to save their lives.


    High-level spirit animals and magic users of cultivation more than apprentice level were able to do this spell. This was a trump card, but it held a humongous price to pay to use it. Nobody dared to use this one final act of attack or defense unless absolutely necessary. Although this attack had increasing power as one''s cultivation increased, they will have the hardest time cultivating back to their power level. If the expert that died on the battle in the Goldfair city had not caught the rockets with his hands and blasted himself in the process, he would have certainly used this magic before he died and thus taking out as many enemies with him as possible.


    But this didn''t matter to Robert. He had been experimenting with blood and had collected blood samples from those who have used the taboo magic. After much observation, he drew a conclusion. The ember blood attack, just like its name suggested, was something that burned the magical cells in one¡¯s blood! This had two implications for Robert. Firstly, He can use the taboo magic two times as there were two kinds of blood cells in his body. Secondly, He could just transfuse some spirit animal blood to replenish the blood cells in his body, Making it possible for him to get back his magic using ability instantly!


    Two attacks! He had to carefully execute this two attacks and defeat the enemy.


    He had considered a few of his choices, he could make a huge stone spike and try to impale his enemy or summon a giant boulder to crush him, but the foe could easily dodge it. It was too much risk. If he summons a thousand rock spears and sends it all out towards the enemy, it would surely succeed and might even injure the enemy. But injuring his foe was not Robert''s Intention, he wanted to kill his enemy.


    Robert gathered all the magical energy reserves in his body to his fists and punched out, just like the one-two sequence from the boxing sport. Sending stones flying towards the enemy with each punch. This attack had power behind it and Torkel had to guard himself against the stones by summoning an ice shield. This was what Robert wanted, to block the view of his enemy for a second.


    Robert didn''t stop sending rocks towards his enemy, he willed and his whole blood boiled. The magical cells in the blood exploded into wisps of energy, all of which gathered at his feet. Robert twisted his feet, and the earth beneath Torkel immediately caved in, He was not expecting this and fell into the quicksand-like earth. He tried summoning an ice block to stand in, but it also got trapped in the quicksand-like earth that was beneath him.


    Robert twisted his feet the other way and the earth that was like quicksand immediately got hard. Harder than any of the rock in the surrounding, effectively sealing in Torkel.


    Torkel had no idea what had happened. How was an apprentice level user able to use a magic of this scale? The answer to that question was obvious, the ember blood magic! He was surrounded by darkness, Torkel understood Robert''s intention, Robert was clearly buying more time to run away and escape! Although he couldn''t move, he was not restricted from using magic. He summoned a layer of ice around him and then melted it, giving him some room to move. He raised his hands and shooted out a large ice spike, trying to break out of this earth prison. He mustn''t let Robert escape! But the ice spike was unable to dig much and was only able to penetrate a few feets.


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    Torkel pondered his options at this moment. The only way to break out of this place immediately was to use the ember blood magic to do so. But he didn''t want to do it. How could he throw away his cultivation just like that to kill a puny apprentice level magic user? He could kill this Robert anytime he needed, and now that he had already used the taboo magic, he was so much easier to kill! Torkel summoned another ice spike, this time it dug a few more inches. He continuously did the same thing over and over and after a few times, he saw a earth starting to cave in from above.


    Torkel was overjoyed at this sight, that meant that he had dug to the surface! One more ice spike and he would be out of here. After getting out, he could choose to either go chase and kill Robert or run away if the situation was not in his favor and Robert had summoned people to his aide.


    One more spike, raising both his hands above his head, Torkel summoned the largest ice spike that he can. And the moment the ice spike was launched, he jumped up high, following it. after the ice spike goes through the surface, he wanted to get the hell out of this damned earthen prison, also if possible surprise Robert and kill him if he was still out there. The ice spike dug through the earthen layer and something that Torkel never expected happened.


    The ice spike, not melting, immediately vaporized into a puff of steam that covered the small cave that Torkel was in. Before he could think, drops of lava fell into the ground in front of him and solidified. Torkel was mortified. Lava? how does the hell this place get covered in lava? The next moment, a chunk of lava dripped down, aiming for his head. Raising his hands, Torkel summoned an ice shield, with the last bit of magic that he had. Was this his end? Torkel could think of no other way to escape.


    Torkel had no other choice now, he willed and his blood boiled ember blood magic! his body got covered in layers upon layers of frost, effectively sealing himself in. He summoned a giant ice piece, in the place the lava was in and thus neutralized the threat. He had never expected something like this. Panting, he cursed Robert. Breaking open the ice that covered the lava and jumped to the surface.


    Right now he didn''t have any other choice than to run away. Although he had been careful in every step of this mission, he had failed against an apprentice level magic user.


    Robert waited outside the earthen prison, in his hands, the loaded gun that had five shots. He had used up both his ultimate attacks and had prepared a real nasty surprise for his enemy. Robert prayed for this idea of his to work. He had bet all his hopes on the fact that his enemy will have to use his entire magic power and the ultimate ability to break out of there. Thus giving him an enemy that had no cultivation and the power of a normal human being.


    The moment the earth broke and Torkel jumped out of the hole in the ground was the moment Robert opened fire,


    Bam


    The first bullet hit his chest and cleanly passed through, and lodged itself in the wall behind.Torkel was not a cultivator anymore, for at least a long time, and his body had no resistance towards attacks anymore. Torkels world turned into darkness.


    Robert emptied his clip and all the bullets found its target. Leaving behind a corpse.


    He had killed an expert with his own personal power.


    Yuuma listened as the scholars decrypted parts of the parchment that was on the table. Although most of what he said didn¡¯t make sense, these guys were able to accurately understand the first part of the document and thus Yuuma trusted that what they were telling was the truth.


    They told Yuuma how the parchment was about animals, spirit animals so small that the naked eyes were unable to see them. And how it can be used to deliver spirit animal blood and find the best humans to acquire blood from for something.


    What none of them knew was that what they described was genetic engineering microorganisms, making them carriers of spirit animal blood, thus making Yuuma¡¯s experiments on humans possible in large scale. An experiment, disguised as a plague.

 Chapter 37 : Journeyman level

    Observing his blood through the microscope, Robert sighed. There was not a single magic cell to be seen in his blood. This was a bad news as he wouldn¡¯t be able to do any magic now and will have to hunt spirit animals to obtain their blood. But this also provided Robert with an opportunity, he could reset his stats!


    Until he finds some high-level spirit animals to obtain their blood for transfusion, Robert could change his elemental affinity to whatever he wants by purging the magic cells on his blood.


    Robert took a vial of earth element blood that he had and injected it into his vein. The magic cells dispersed into different parts of his body bringing a warmth with them.


    Getting his magic power back, Robert felt something was different. Closing his eyes and concentrating on his mysticle, he found out the reason for the different feeling and his lips curved into a smile. It seemed that the energy brought forward by the purging of blood cells had risen the amount of magical energy within them. Which in turn compressed the energy within the mysticle, making it possible for him to break through the next level, journeyman.


    Robert willed and broke through the next level. He was an apprentice no more!


    Kicking the ground, he raised up a large boulder, it was three times the size that he could levitate before. Dropping the boulder to the ground, he tried out different spells from the golden grimoire. The difficulty that he had before for practicing the higher level spells from the grimoire was now nonexistent.


    Out of curiosity, Robert tried drawing a fire glyph. And the result was nothing unexpected, he couldn¡¯t even summon a candle flame. Being a fire mage, he was not accustomed to not having the power of fire and thus decided to get his hands on some fire spirit animal blood as soon as he can.


    He tried out his celestial method of cultivation once, a spiral tornado formed inside his mysticle. This one was at least ten times faster than what Robert could summon before. Robert did his routine of creating another inverted tornado. As both of these tornadoes got to the maximum angular velocity that Robert could impart to them, Robert collided them. Robert knew that this was of no use yet but still hoped some quarks or other hadrons form inside his mysticle. And what Robert didn¡¯t want to happen was what had happened. Nothing.


    Robert didn¡¯t want to spend much of his time doing this experimental cultivation and wanted to use his time to develop the town of Greyston.


    In front of Robert was a book that was written by the previous town lord. It was actually a yearly report to the Black Dragon clan on all the major incidents in the town. Robert only got this a map of Greyston today as it was sent to him by a messenger from Goldfair city. The report book was written lousy and rushed at most parts. Robert couldn¡¯t blame the previous town lord for that, there was no way the officials at the capital city would read an annual report from this remote town. All they were interested in were the amount of production of goods and the revenue generated by the town. If no one was reading it, then why should he take his time writing it?


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    Looking at the map, Robert understood the general geography of the town, it was situated 130 miles from the border of Lorvale and Holton Kingdom. The town was only 9 square miles in area, but the gathering zone, the area from which ores and other materials were obtained was rather large and spread 2500 square miles, almost twenty-five miles in all directions.


    The major source of income was from iron mines. Greyston had a large chunk of the nation¡¯s iron mines. There was also a herb garden that situated near the town, which produced many medicines that were then traded to different parts of Lorvale and even Sand nation.


    Greyston was a rather peaceful town, the tall town walls kept the spirit animals in the nearby woods at bay. The townsfolk also loved to live a peaceful life and fights inside the town was almost nonexistent.


    The town had almost all of the basic necessities. A large part of the town¡¯s population was engaged in mining or smithing related activities. But there was also a large portion of people who were engaged in weaving activities. The black soil of Greyston was suitable for the cultivation of cotton and thus there was a cloth weaving industry that bloomed in the town.


    Robert wanted to put his work into this industry and make it prosper. But after considering the state of the world he was in, ruthless and murderous, he decided against it. He had to concentrate on one thing and make this place a powerhouse of that particular industry. And in the short time, he was in this world, he has proven himself to be a rather proficient weaponsmith.


    The Lorvale Kingdom as well as the multitude of clans and sects inside were always at each other''s throat. This meant that anything he would sell would be a hot commodity. Although large clans like the Black Dragon have their own weapons division. They restricted the selling of many of their weapons and weapon systems.


    This was to limit the spread of their secret techniques and methods to the other clans. The smaller clans bought a mass of weapons from the larger clans and had their own weaponsmiths for special weapons. There were truly no go to weapons dealer in this kingdom. the only ones that had the knowledge on how to create the gunpowder were Sophie and some of her confidantes.


    Since she was currently not in good terms with the leadership of the clan, Robert was sure that she wouldn''t leak the secret recipe. She had more to gain by selling these things on the side without clan knowledge, amassing power, and doing a coup de tat.


    Robert was also thinking about how he can boost his army, both in quality and in quantity. Understanding the reasoning of that old Yuuma, Robert was sure he was amassing power. He faced a setback, but it doesn''t seem like he will back off. It only seemed like This man, once his techniques were refined, would come back. At that time, It wouldn''t just be Goldfair that would be in danger. The whole Lorvale Kingdom might face a trial it has never faced.


    Robert didn''t have any time to waste, and had to form a plan soon.

 Back in action

    A quick rewind. If you remember the general plot of the story, please skip to the next chapter.


    Robert, while interning at a particle accelerator under Stephen, did a groundbreaking discovery and created antimatter for the 1st time in history. But this unauthorized experiment by Robert was being stealthily watched by Stephen. Coveting the fame and fortune it could bring, He forced the findings from Robert.


    With no way out, Robert took his own life, taking the one who forced him into that corner with him. He resorted to releasing the antimatter to create an explosion. This, in turn, trapped his soul in the void of the universe. By the result of another freak experiment, he ended up in another man''s body. This young man named Riley was an orphan, living in a small village. Robert, after finding some information about the world he was in from the villagers, left the village to go to the nearby city of Goldfair.


    There he saw a weapon shop and met with the daughter of the Black Dragon clan, Sophie. She had been ousted from her clan by her father¡¯s younger brother. Robert with his knowledge in chemistry proved the chemist there was a phony and thus gained his position as the alchemist. Soon he established himself by creating gunpowder and cannons which many people sought.


    The Chemist that Robert got fired was angry and wanted to take revenge on Robert. He hired a group of thugs, but these men were beaten black and blue by the superiority of the shotgun that Robert wielded. But Robert made a rather foolish decision to hand them over to the guards instead of killing them.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    This provoked the Snake Skull guild which backed the thugs and villains in the city, causing them to send 20 men to kill Robert. After a battle against them, Robert killed many and escaped into the Black Dragon mansion. By this time he had learned the secret of the magic power and had devised a way to transfuse the blood from spirit animals, gaining more elemental affinity and power.


    Disaster knocked on the Goldfair city gates when the army of Yuuma, a 500 men battalion mounting elemental panthers arrived. The city fell to the hands of Yugimi, the leader of Snake Skulls, and the butchering of common people for the sake of experimentation began.


    Robert and Sophie had to retreat to a nearby Black Dragon town to think up a strategy to fight and take the city. Robert designed and built guns, and even rifles, and trained hunters and soldiers living in the Greyston in the weapons. The preparations were complete in two weeks and the siege of the Goldfair city began.


    The blitz attack that Robert had planned included planting time bombs inside the castle of Snake Skull, A spy from Black Dragon planted the bombs and once it was set off, the attack began. Many experts who were in Yuuma''s army was shot to death by snipers, the Towers of Goldfair city was taken by grenadiers of Greyston militia. And finally many of the elites from Yuuma''s army fell prey to the Hwacha that Robert had created.


    Although the city was retrieved, Yuuma and most of the elites of his army escaped. Robert captured Yugimi and tortured him for information about Yuuma.


    Robert returned to the Greyston town as the town Lord. And began planning for the expansion of the town. He decided to turn the place into the go-to place for weapons for the many different clans of the Lorvale Kingdom.

 Chapter 38 : Hunting Spirit Beasts

    A black muscular steed trotted through the mountain road, following it were two other horses, brown in color. Mounting the black steed was Robert, the new Lord of Grayston town, and the other two were Mike and Isidro. This burly hunter was eager to join Robert in the hunt when he heard they would hunt snow eagles. He brought Isidro along as he was a much better shooter.


    The narrow pathway spiraled the dark mountain three times and still, they were only halfway through. Robert''s black-red hair was flailing in the wind as it blew from the bottom of the mountain to the top. Even through his wool and leather jacket, he felt the chill of the wind in his left arm. Looking down, the path that leads to the mountain was there, slithering like a snake through the valley. The thick fog that gave them a hard time seeing was now dissipating, revealing a grass field.


    "Ai! Slow down !"


    Robert who was engrossed by the natural beauty of the valley was startled into reality by the rough voice of Mike. Pulling the rein, Robert slowed his horse down. He waited for Mike and Isidro to catch up. Mike was having trouble with his thick beard and mustache as it was whipping around. His red hair also fluttered around, resembling a flame. Isidro''s deep dark blue hair, on the other hand, was held down by a hairband.


    "We''ll leave ''em here, " Mike said, pointed to the horse he was riding.


    "Alright !"


    Robert nodded and dismounted the horse. He brushed its mane for a moment before following Mike and Isidro who already continued the trek on foot.


    Snow eagles were aggressive about their territory. Humans or animals, anything that placed a foot inside the valley of this mountain was chased and hunted by these fearless beasts. Their population had to be controlled, or even the ecosystems that were in the nearby mountains were affected.


    Soon after, the road disappeared and a steep rocky terrain appeared. Mike walked in the front, His arms held a repeating rifle, a giant sword with engraved patterns in the blade rested on his back. Robert walked right behind him, armed with another prototype repeating rifle. This rifle that Robert have devised had many improvements from the first version. He has had the old firing mechanism removed and the glyph firing mechanism by Darell put in. He also included a magazine loading mechanism, movable vertically into the gun. One could now fire seven shots before having to reload the gun.


    Mike was overjoyed on testing this gun. The part of Goldfair battle he hated the most was the reloading of his rifle, and now he could fire away many times without being bothered to reload. He even made a few custom magazines so he has twice the normal clip size.


    Isidro''s new rifle was rather long, and this had only four bullets in the magazine. But the cartridge was rather long and had much more amount of black powder in them. There was also a rather large scope, enabling him to hunt at a distance. The improved accuracy of the gun exited Isidro, but his face didn''t show this excitement. It was as cold as always.


    Three men, armed with strange weapons, climbed through the rocky steep. Except from some wild plants and weeds on rock bases, there were no other living beings in sight. Robert''s palms were red from gripping on the steep, the cold sharp rocks have already bruised his hands several times. Although his physique was rather weak, he was still a Journeyman magic user, and this had given his body a rather high toughness.


    After climbing another hundred feet or so, They reached a flat terrain. Surprisingly this terrain was green, rather than the grey-black rocks they had been seeing all this time. A grass patch and there were some trees most of them thick than tall. Just as Robert was about to walk forward, An ear-piercing screech greeted him.


    Rising his head, Robert saw an eagle, as white as snow, gliding from atop the tree. The low flying wind-beast flew like an arrow from a bow towards them. The strong winds from its wings buffeted the grass on the ground, causing many of the leaf blades to fly away with the wind.


    These snow eagles had a wingspan of 4 meters, twice the size of a fully grown bald eagle. And the fact that this gigantic avian was less than 30 meters away and closing in on him caused Robert''s heart to skip a beat.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Regaining his composure in the next moment, Robert took his rifle up, but before he even aimed at the bird, a gunshot rang out from behind him. A cloud of smoke rose and in the next split-second, the bird that was closing in on them jolted, A few of its feathers from its left wing have scattered in the wind. Isidro knocked the top of the magazine, another round fell into the chamber.


    Flapping its wind around to regain balance, the bird let out a screech and returned to its old trajectory. But this time with two other snow eagles on its tail. Robert sneered and ran forward.


    "I''ll take the right side," Robert sneered as he rushed forward. In each of his stride, a rock unearthed and gave him a push forward.


    Mike was happy at the sight of a snow eagle, but now there were three of them, he was pleasantly surprised. Running towards the left to flank the giant birds, he followed Robert''s actions.


    When Robert reached about twenty meters from his target, he tactfully pressed down his leg to the ground and gave it a little bend. Four boulders rose in front of him, three forming floating steps.


    Not slowing down, Robert jumped onto the first step. This two-meter high target would''ve been a hard reach for Riley, and impossible to even imagine for the old Robert. But a little more force to the earth was all it required for the now Journeyman level mage to jump into the boulder. Just as the first stone that Robert''s left leg had stepped on started to descend from his weight, He took another leap. And then another one from there reaching the final rock.


    All this happened in less than a second and Robert was now six meters high, in front of him floated another rock, half the size of the others. Robert threw a right straight at the boulder with his palms open. A boom resounded as the earth magic pushed the boulder forward, towards the incoming snow eagle.


    The boulder moved as fast as an arrow towards the beast, but only grazed its wings. The agile bird only needed to move a bit sideways to avoid the peril. But as the bird turned its head from the boulder that flew past it to the man responsible, all it saw was a cloud of smoke, and its world went dark.


    Mike on the left side had already fired half his magazine. He knocked the top of the magazine, the magazine moved down and the gun was ready to fire again. This 8th bullet was the fifth one to find the target and had sealed the fate of the bird.


    Turning back, It seemed that Isidro managed to finish off his bird with only two shots. He was currently scanning the sky for any other arrivals. Seeing that there were no more spirit beasts nearby he lowered his gun.


    Mike looked at Robert with reverence as they were carrying the bounty of the hunt to a tree shade. He had been in many hunting parties before, and this was not the first time he was hunting snow eagles. But this was the first time the hunt was over in a single minute. It usually took a team of five or more hunters several tens of minutes to slowly wore a snow eagle down and hunt it.


    This young lord has fashioned such a fearsome weapon. These firearms were lethal in Goldfair but were not overwhelming due to their load time. But now that there was only a small delay between firing shots, he could only imagine how much power a weapon like this can have in the hands of a disciplined army.


    The hunt continued at another part of the mountain, this time they could only find two eagles. Apart from the eagles, the party couldn''t find any other beasts, spirit or otherwise in the mountain.


    The hunting party threaded down the mountain, Mike and Isidro were carrying some heavy bags with them. Robert only had a big leather pouch and a small bag. After the hunt, he only wanted the blood and heart of the animal, thus everything else went to Mike and Isidro.


    The small bag with Robert contained some feathers and bones of the bird, he took them to experiment and study. Mike who butchered the birds eagerly gave Robert the bones, even selecting the best ones for him. These bones had many uses, they made for excellent blowgun, thus Mike assumed that it was Robert''s reason of interest.


    " ''Twas a good hunt, We can go for another round in the azure river if ya like,"


    Mike was brimming with energy and apparently wanted to continue the hunt.


    "Another day, Mike"


    Robert could only reject the offer, He had many things to do in the town. And as he had already finished his objective here there was no reason to stay behind.


    Isidro didn''t want to go for another round, but hearing the destination, he hoped the lord would say yes. Water was his domain and a hunt in the river was a walk in the park for Isidro. He wanted to show Robert that he was not only a sharpshooter but also excelled in the field of magic. But alas, he''ll have to wait for another day.


    Isidro was 25, and all his life, he had never been so close to someone who held this much power. When he was in the small army barracks in the Greyston town, the highest officer he had met was the sergeant from the Goldfair city. Now being with the town lord, this was his chance to prove himself. He gazed down the mountain, thinking how farther he had come from his old sorry life.


    Descending the mountain, the three mounted horses galloped towards Greyston town.

 Chapter 39 : Loot and The Council

    Robert looked at the loot in front of him, The bounty from today''s hunt as well as the assassin lay on the table.


    First, he took one of the daggers that the assassin had, its handle was made of gold, with intricate design work, its blade was made of some type of steel, but he couldn''t even spot a single scratch in this dagger. It was either that this dagger was really sturdy or that it had never been used before.


    Robert took the dagger and thrust it into a wall,


    ~Ca-Ching~


    The dagger went in halfway into the wall. Robert had to exert some force and even give leverage with his leg to get the dagger out of the wall, but when he took it out, the blade was still shining like new, there was not even a scratch in the dagger that bore a hole through the dark rock that made the mansion.


    Robert smiled and put the dagger down, then he took a look at the other possessions of the assassin. There were a few golds and a spirit stone in the pockets of the assassin, but what caught Robert''s eye was a pouch, this empty looking pouch had a strange magical energy about it.


    Robert took it and examined its exterior, noting nothing special he tried to empty it into the table, but instead of his expectations, which were gold or spirit stones, what fell into the table was a giant sword. five times the length of the pouch itself.


    Robert was once again amazed at the difference between his and this world. This pouch somehow had a mechanism to constrict space, he smiled and looked into the pouch but could only see pitch blackness. He was still feeling that strange magical power from the pouch like it was beckoning him. He tried to pour a bit of magic power into it and suddenly his eyes widened, there was a space, almost a meter in width and height inside the sack.


    Robert was able to see the contents of the sack in his consciousness, he could see an assortment of items inside the sack, some scrolls, another dagger, many day-to-day items. He put his hands into the sack and tried to grab the dagger. to his surprise, the dagger just materialized into his hand just as he put his hand in.


    "Whoa!"


    Although the Robert that had lived in this world for about three weeks managed to accept what just happened, Robert, the physicist still scratched his head to find a logical reasoning behind it. He theorized that if the pouch constricted not just space but also time, it would still be within the realm of theoretical physics.


    Glancing through the contents of the pouch, Robert put the dagger into it and tucked it away in his pocket. This pouch was too valuable to lose.


    He then poured the blood he had collected into some crystal jars and locked them into a shelf.


    Now he had to get rid of his responsibilities when he took over the town, he had expected some work that came with it, but he really underestimated the quantity. And the old town council was disbanded when the town lord stepped down.


    This man was not particularly happy with it and had made it so that Robert would have a hard time getting the city up and running.


    There were about 7 people around the big dining table of the town hall. It was on the ground floor of the two-story building. Walking into the building, Robert saw that the hall wall still had a giant black dragon banner adorning it.


    He should really rebrand the town, Robert thought. But it was too much work and he already had enough work that he didn''t want to take this up now.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Seeing him walk into the hall, the men and women around the table stood up in respect. Smiling nervously Robert gestured them to sit down. The dreaded stage fright that he had in his previous life now resurfacing.


    He remembered about the time he had to present a report in front of a crowd, and how he had totally flunked it. But that was the old Robert he has now changed.


    Robert took a deep breath and exhaled it, then walked to the lonely tall chair at one side of the table.


    Robert sat down and glanced at the members that had gathered there.


    The man who sat first to his right was about forty-five years old, the skin in his receding hairline reflected the bright light from the orb above. A trimmed salt and pepper beard and chiseled face gave this man a stern look. Wearing a metal armor this man headed the town guards. His name, Reginald Wallace. He couldn''t participate in the Goldfair city attacks as he was already occupied by the responsibility of protecting Greyston and forming backup plans.


    Next to him sat Nenand, this man, about 30 years old, was the subhead of the city guards and had played a major role in organizing the militia for the Goldfair attack. He had been requested by Robert to be here, and his excitement was clear on his face.


    "Let''s start the council?"


    The source of the question was the man in his left, about fifty years old, this man with his scholarly appearance wouldn''t stand out in a crowd in any manner. He was the head of the previous city council, and played the role of an assistant to the town lord, making the town run smoothly and managing everything from behind the scenes.


    Robert nodded.


    Lloyd Brock, the man who spoke before introduced the city council to Robert.


    After introductions and understanding what each of the member''s roles, Robert shooted questions one after another at the council members and gained various information about the town and many of this information were bad news.


    Greyston, being a mining and blacksmithing town, was polluted. The air was filled with dust and smoke, the water in the wells was polluted, and many men were sick. Many had abandoned the town to go to cities, but those who were stuck here had build houses in the edges of the town, making as much as distance as they can from the smoke and pollutants of the smithies.


    Robert stared at the Black Dragon banner on the wall, was this why Sophie gave the town to him so eagerly? the living condition of this place was really bad.


    ''that cant be it,'' He shook his head and came back from the deep thoughts. He was sure that every single mining town in this world had the same problems, but he had to solve at least some of the major ones here.


    Robert asked the members'' opinion on how they can improve the town now that the dangerous times have passed.


    "Peace is good for business!" The shrewd-looking man, the representative of the chamber of commerce spoke up, then he gave some of his ideas on how the commerce can be improved in Grayston.


    The same went on with all the other departments, soon they began arguing how their department''s project was more important than the other''s and just as Robert was about to speak up and stop the arguments, a thick voice came up from his right.


    "The peace times will be over soon,"


    This one sentence was enough for the whole town hall that was bustling with arguments to become dead silent. Everyone in the room looked at the source of the sound, Reginald Wallace.


    "There has been a regime change in the Holton Kingdom, the previous King was killed by his own son and is now the ruler"


    He continued to describe the power-hungry Raul Artur to the council, although he was staring at a wall, he shot a quick glance in Robert''s direction to see his expression.


    Long story short, Almost every noble the Lorvale Kingdom was sure that the Holton Kingdom which was locked in with mountain ranges in two sides and forest in the third will invade Lorvale. The only delay for this impending invasion was that Raul hadn''t yet accumulated the total control over Holton.


    "Do you know when this invasion might happen?"


    Robert asked Reginald, although he didn''t expect an answer, he got one.


    "worst case 3 months best case a year," After saying this, Reginald went back to his silence.


    ''3 months huh''


    Robert''s lips curved into a smile, then he said


    "War is good for business,"

 Chapter 40 : A war from history

    Holton was a nation of predominantly wood mages. But they used a variation of the wood magic to make and control puppets. Although Reginald didn''t have much information, he also told them about the secret technique that the Holtons possessed, controlling people and corpses.


    The last time Holton attacked Lorvale was about 24 years ago, a time when Lorvale reigned supreme in this region. The combined army of Lorvale''s clans was five times today''s strength.


    Reginald was just a foot soldier at that time, a man who just became a journeyman level magic user, he still remembered the day of the invasion as if it was yesterday.


    Reginald was among the group of soldiers who were guarding the abandoned Greyston town, The villagers have already retreated to Goldfair city hearing about the border towns falling into enemy hands. Reginald''s group only had a single command, unless they had a command otherwise, destroy anything that tried to leave Grayston towards the Lorvale Kingdom, whether they were friends or foes, dead or alive.


    He was not sure what to make of this command from the higher-ups, killing traitors and wimps who deserted the battlefield was considered normal. But this command had forbidden anyone, even if they were deadly injured to retreat. He stood atop the city gates, his eyes staring at the pathway in between the mountains that led to Grayston.


    The attachment of army that had advanced into the battlefield last week was now retreating. Soldiers began gathering in the town from the frontlines. The stench of blood thickened the air.


    Tens of thousands of men filled the streets near the Western gate of the town, many were panting from the long walk, some chanted prayers, a man astute atop a hairy elephant gave out commands to the soldiers.


    After a few hours, a rumbling noise came from the path that the soldiers have retreated through, followed by tens of thousands of wooden puppets wearing armor. The armor of the puppets in the forefront was stained with blood, though they had none.


    The noise was metal and wood colliding with each other as the puppets marched.


    Reginald expected as much, he knew he would be primarily fighting puppets in this battle. But what he hadn''t expected was the many Lorvale soldiers walking along the puppets, their eyes had lost all its luster as if they had no soul. The soldiers were wounded, heavily. Many had the weapons they were attacked with still stuck on their body, blood dripping from the wounds.


    now Reginald understood the command, it was not meant for the retreating soldiers, but for these... dead soldiers?


    His heart pounded out of the fear. Not the fear of death, but the dread of becoming one of these soulless human puppets. Slaying his own kin and kind, slaughtering through the land that he vowed to protect.


    Following them, there were animals, some made of wood, others, real ones. Many of them were mounted by mages in armor, their eyes shining brightly in green.


    The siege of Grayston lasted for a week, The opening outside the city walls was essentially a meat grinder. Tens of thousands fell dead on Lorvale''s side. A mountain of wood and metal formed from all the puppets that were destroyed.


    Then the Kingdom of Holton was taken over. The new King was not a conqueror, he made the nation prosper and didn''t respond to the calls for war from within his court.


    That man was murdered by his own son, who wanted the nation to be back to its old self.


    And now Holton, which was at its peak of prosperity wanted to take on Lorvale, again.


    Hearing all this Robert''s urge to make more weapons and grow Grayston only increased. The passage of time Has weekend Lorvale Kingdom, but that was not the scary part. The Holton Kingdom was at war, internally or externally for a long time before that Siege. And that nation has been in a state of prosperity and peace for more than two decades.


    ''What if they haven''t ceased the production of puppets?'' 24 years of production, if they went all out, how large of an army will Lorvale be facing? The danger from the unknown mind control technique was also there.


    He didn''t want to lose the town he owned, he didn''t want the people in Westfae or Goldfair to suffer either. He decided to push his original plans to the side for now.


    The meeting continued for about three hours. And most of the time was taken by Robert asking and understanding many things about Lorvale and Holton. Robert deligated most of the day to day management of the town to the council, now he could focus more on innovative things rather than the mundane town management.


    ''There''s no reason to develop this town if there will be no town to hold on to in the future,'' Robert thought. But first, he had to confirm the rumors of the war.


    ''Guess I''ll take a trip to Goldfair city tomorrow, maybe Sophy can confirm this''


    "Hey, Nenand! can you tell me who''s the best weaponsmith in town? I want someone good with mechanisms" Robert turned back and asked Nenand who was walking out of the town hall a distance behind him.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "Oh! sure," Nenand replied, then scratched his head as he thought of who was the best. Then his eyes lighted up and continued.


    "It''d be grandpa Sharpe!"


    "Sharpe?" A fitting name for a weaponsmith, Robert thought.


    "Let''s go, his shop is a little... out of the way," Nenand said.


    "Gramps is a bit weird, but I''m sure he''ll like you" Nenand continued, with a smirk.


    Last time Nenand went there to get a sword forged, this Sharpe made him wait for a month. And finally, when it was ready, Nenand was dumbfounded by what his commission has turned into.


    This man Sharpe had forged him a flexible sword with Iron Lizard scales. It was sharper than a normal sword and even transformed into a normal short sword. But Nenand couldn''t handle it. He had cut himself with this blade almost everytime he tried to learn it.


    It was not like Nenand was not talented or lazy, his power level and skills in shortsword attested to this. But without proper training or manual, this short sword was not useful for him in any way.


    And Sharpe had made him pay the price even though he didn''t make what Nenand had asked for. This made Nenand hate this old man for a while, but when he tried to appraise it in Goldfair city, he came to know that these swords sold for almost three times what this gramps has charged him. And the one he had was a top class one.


    Nenand still trained with the flexible sword every day, but had made the old man forge another regular shortsword for him. This time he left instructions on exactly what he wanted, and it turned out exactly how he wanted it to be.


    The town lord was also like Sharpe, making new weird weapons. But his was more usable and deadly.


    Nenand and Robert walked through many twisting alleys before they reached a shopfront. The shop was quite unremarkable.


    "You sure this is the place?" Robert asked Nenand with a questioning face.


    "Haha, yes, this is grandpa Sharpe''s house," Nenand replied.


    Walking into the shop Robert''s jaw dropped in amazement. The display of weapons in the shelf, although small in number, was able to instantly give him the confidence he needed about grandpa Sharpe.


    There were many different weapons, all having some special mechanisms in the shelf. A longsword that had springloaded smaller blades that adorned its blade, Shurikens that could be wound up to increase power, there were many weapons,


    The ones that caught Robert''s eye was a crossbow, Although it was a crossbow, it resembled him of a minigun. The crossbow bolts were contained in a round magazine, already wound up and ready to go.


    This was exactly the person Robert was looking for. Robert walked to the counter where an old man, at least 60 years old was tinkering with a yo-yo like thing, the old man carefully folded the six blades that extended from the yo-yo to inside and closed the shell that was open in one side.


    Finishing what he had been doing Sharpe looked up from the table.


    "Ah! Nenand? " Sharpe was excited to see a customer, but when it turned out to be Nenand, he was disappointed.


    "Hello, Grandpa Sharpe!" Nenand greeted him with a bright smile.


    "I am done making stuff for you Nenand, Short swords are boring" Sharpe was surely annoyed by Nenand, He didn''t like making uninspiring things, and shortsword was as boring as they came.


    "It''s not for him Mr. Sharpe its for me, I''m Robert", Robert greeted himself.


    "Nice to meet you Robert, But I stopped making stuff from drawings or descriptions telling me what to do, I can make something original if you want though."


    "ahh.. well, would you at least take a look at this one," Robert said this and extended his hand, it held a paper with a drawing.


    Sharpe took a glance and was about to outright reject Robert. He guessed it would be another sword or bow. but seeing some detailed technical drawing made him stare at the paper for a full minute.


    Then he smiled and turned up and asked Robert


    "You can call me Grandpa Sharpe. This fire rune can''t even hurt a fly, and what is this thing exactly?"


    "You know the miniature fire rune?" Darell had worked on this rune for days before he could develop it. This man was able to identify it immediately. Nenand was not exaggerating about him at all.


    "It''s a forgotten rune since it is mostly useless for any practical application" Grandpa Sharpe explained.


    Robert explained guns and made a deal with Sharpe to make some machines. Sharpe agreed wholeheartedly.


    What made Sharpe happy was that he was not going to create the mechanism from the paper. Although he liked that, it was too simple. He was entrusted with the job of creating a machine that created that mechanism.


    An assembly line for the gun, Robert called it. And he also had to create a mechanism to make this thing explode if someone tried to dissect it.


    Sharpe was overjoyed. So was Robert.